This Way Up

There's really no proper way to explain this, its one of those things that the internet doesn't do any justice as it requires touch, and smell to accompany to text and photos. I spent most of last night making this, my friends and i made some mushroom soup and sat in my room all night.

Ive always had thought that hallucinogens shouldn't be taken whilst your mind isn't totally sound and considering the tone of my last few posts i would of advised someone in my position to not indulge. Ive done them a fair few times before in my life and i do enjoy them, i enjoy the thinking process i go on.

I feel completely happy about my life at the moment, and it dont want that to seem like its a result of the mushrooms, as they didn't give me any kind of chemical to make me happy, i did that myself, they just let my mind go. I learnt that no matter what i do, or how i get into unhappy situations that inside i am a happy person.

Ive always been raised with a lot of love and ive always had so much unconditional love for people but i felt that was taken away from me a few years ago. I met someone that was lost themselves and didnt know how they were affecting me and subsequently i felt like i had to stop giving people the benefit of the doubt and almost stop loving everyone.

Last night i got that back, I feel like me again. I revisited old photographs and compeltely questioned all the reasons for me photographing, what it is to me and how i use it.

I learnt that in the times that i am so desperate to photograph things that there are other things that serve the same purposes for me too. For instance this book, i value it like i would any photo, as it is a photo in itself.

It served the same purposes, it gave me a vehicle for understanding things and gave me an object in return that represents my memory, it has the narative quality a photo has but unlike a traditional photo or book for that matter, like the timeless place i was in last night, this book was never meant to be read from cover to cover.

It wasnt wrote cover to cover, it was wrote franticly trying to find blank space, like photography it doesnt really have order untill its editing stage. Its impossible for us to not read it in the normal way, we know how to read a book and thats front to back. Its ok to be read like that, but just know that was not how it was wrote.

Like all my other note books it serves to be a personal thought process on paper.

I present to you my night, and the conclusion that i am happy

Repeat

Its amusing how my work circles, a few years ago whenever i photographed anything the pressing factor withing my work was identity. Its something that will always be present as it was a big part of it, but ive noticed it reoccurring lately.

At the point that i was particularly interested in identity i was so unsure about my own identity, i spent so many years when i was younger so confused about my sexuality that i completely lost who i was, i had absolutely no clue who or what i was.

Ive accepted and got over the fact that i have to deal with these problems but i haven't actually sorted out whats going on, i tend to postpone it and repress any feelings i have that i just don't understand.

Identity is seeping back through my work, its taken its place in its once overthrown palace. I see it coming back due to the issues arising within my life. The only difference is that this time i talk about it and don't shy away from it.

I will one day work out what is going on, but until then don't ask me who i am.

Smothered

Today is the day i considered how unhappy my life will be. So far all that i can see is that being in solitude is the only way i can be happy. I never know what i want, i never have and if i never find out this will always happen.

I have never known who and what i want from a relationship, since i was young and developing my awareness is of sex i have never known what sex i want. Will i ever know? i get into relationships where i get so infatuated with the person that i neglect anything going on within me, i block it out completely to a point that it doesn't exist at all.

Each of my relationships have ended in confusion, confusion over where i go and i am currently in that. The problem i have is that i dont take time to understand, i don't devote time to myself to work it out.

In my selfishness i have hurt people, this never meant to happen and i am sorry to all of you that read this and understand. you are each wonderful people who i do not appreciate enough due to my own turmoil.

i will work it out one day but until then i think i just need to be alone.

Morning

I seem to see death everywhere, photography is killing everyone i know. The death doesn't come until i edit.

Mistaken Identity

Theres something about sleep where you become no one, you become a complete and empty vessel. Its funny how sleep becomes like traveling in time, to sleep is to lose any connection to our corporeal reality. We have our faces of which we use to distinguish ourselves from everyone else, but our conscience thought and personality is the thing that drives the individuality. Go to sleep and its all gone, you become just a face.

Toothpaste Intimacy

I wanted to do something with these, i have a fair few and i just cant bring myself to throw them away. Each time i bring home a new one the old one stays in the pot unused until i have a few sitting there doing nothing. They then get moved to a small bag i have under the sink where they stay. I've always hoarded things like this but theres something about toothbrushes that i just cant part with.

I put this thing in my mouth at least twice a day every day its the first and last thing that i have contact with and theres something intimate about a toothbrush. I'm the same with shoes, but in a different way, i wont throw those away because i think i may have some use for them at some point.

I feel like my toothbrushes deserve something, so i decided to write about them and take a photo. They've become their own little collection in their own right and i wanted to give them their significance, their own significant in time and space.

So i present a Polaroid of them, unique, irreproducible and complete in its own time and space.