Saving Faces

Pride, honour and saving face are all rooted in the ego. Out of the three I have conserved a certain sense of honour. Whether it be through my work or certain aspects of my behaviour. Honour is simply a set of rules that you live by and as long as you chose those rules I can go with it.
However being proud of something because you are in some way connected to it is really just a form of narcissism and saving face when scandal comes your way is simply trying to cover up the truth. I chose to detach myself from that way of thinking many years ago as both make us blind to reality in different ways.

So why the title? I hear you think.

Well, at the beginning of the year I picked up a second camera for stills and safety shots when shooting video. I’ve been testing it out in various ways, one of which has been taking people’s portraits to test lighting, depth of field and put an online portfolio together. The portfolio is so I have something to send people who want a gun for hire for events but the portrait testing has sprouted wings and become a little something of it’s own. What was originally supposed to be a dozen portraits has now reached 25 faces and is growing. These faces are from different backgrounds, gender and age and are slowly building a mosaic representing the fibre of Hong Kong’s society. Each person simply comes as they are, takes a seat and I take 10 to 30 shots of them. Some stay for 30 mins, others stay for a couple of hours and once they are gone I save their faces for the record.

8.40am

I’ve not done a diary entry in a long time so here goes. I’ve been juggling several projects over the past few months and added to them over time. I’ve stockpiled video footage, photos, collected a bunch of reference images and expanded my notes on the semi fictional city of 6.1.3.Kong.

Yesterday and today are all about sound design for video and this evening I shall be trying different voices to narrate Tik Tak Toe. The image side of the video was finished during the week and is a combination of 375 still images and some footage taken in the studio. As soon as the sound is done it will go online and I can get on with editing a series of photos for S!X (more about that another time as it is still being defined).

I shall be drawing around 25 sketches of faces to use as cover art for a dark ambient album I’m putting together which will double up as a sound track for the White Devil’s Dozen videos. I’m still looking for a model to finish that project as well as needing to write up a script for the Devil himself. So the date of release for that one remains unknown.

Finally: I am still working on The Mysteries, both the poems and the graphic art. It has mutated quite a bit over time from stories and portraits to poems and masks. The latter being what stuck. It’s a follow up to and development of 22 secrets singling out two characters and focusing on the cycle of life. Another CC project although I will make digital downloads available for purchase for those who want prints.

That about sums things up for just now. Stay tuned for work in progress, dirty jokes and pictures of your mom cooking me dinner.

Nirvana – Rock’s Great Depression

At twelve years old I found myself in a country where I didn’t speak the language, being mocked by a culture I didn’t understand and pushed in to a school that followed a religion that went against my nature. In class I would sit with a bilingual dictionary translating common words and trying to learn them by heart as no one was taking the time to help me communicate. When class finished I would get the bus back to the dusty little village my parents had moved us to and run up the stairs of the decrepit old school house we were living in to find my favourite audio cassette that I had saved up my pennies to buy when I was back in Glasgow.
The album was called: Appetite for destruction and it was my anger and frustration being vented for me. I would sit on the window ledge of my bedroom with it blasting out of a cash and carry tape player I had been gifted for Christmas. It was the best part of the day and became a ritual for my first year in the deep south of France.
As the years went by I made a few friends and we would swap tapes, record tracks off of the radio and spend hours talking about and listening to music. We started digging in to the new and the old, from Metallica to 70s rock to a re emerging electronic scene. If we could get our hands on it we would listen to it and an original copy of an album was considered a bit of a treasure. We were invested in music and it felt like music was invested in us. It spoke to us, for us, put on a show, inspired creativity and made us speak a universal language. If you didn’t know what to say, you’d put on a song to suit your message, your mood or as a way to help a friend discover something new. It was the 90s and musically speaking a great time to be a kid. That is, until we hit Nirvana.
At the time I didn’t understand what was happening. My best mate had said to me to check out an album called Nevermind and I did and I loved it. Here was what was going to be the next big thing and we all bought in to it as it sounded great. What we missed was what the messenger was doing to our psyche. A self absorbed junkie playing the anti cool to be cool and telling us all about how shitty he felt and we completely missed that he wasn’t talking to us. He wasn’t reaching out to us with a message or a warning or a story. He was bitching about his self loathing and discontent with his own existence. In short he was dragging us in to his depression and to this day Rock music has not fully recovered.

04.30

You tie up some loose ends, bring people together, sever from others. It’s all part of the process.

The disappointments stack up over the years and after a while you no longer give a fuck. They come, they go, seen it before and will see it again but with each step you learn. You protect and conserve those who are there no matter what and let the rest go and play in traffic.

Over the years my compassion has remained a constant. My pity however has dived to ground zero.

2:29Am

Left wing politics died when the world discovered who Joseph Stalin actually was and still insisted on calling him a communist. Uncle Joe was a monopolising capitalist at best and a mass murdering psychopath at worst but the left had believed in him and the reality hit so hard when the truth came out that people set themselves apart from the left rather than look at what had actually happened. Since then the West has had right wing politics and a left wing that is another right wing party that plays at being the opposition.
In the era of the Internet the people are to blame for this as they have access to many of the documents about the past and present but would rather join a gang, be part of something and spout an opinion they heard somewhere at some point by someone they can’t remember.
I may continue this piece at some point but for now I would rather focus on creative endeavours.

5AM

A docile summer storm has arrived in the city to wash away the sweat and give the air a much needed chill. The rain streams down our old homes where we are stacked like chickens on an industrial farm. Lightening streaks the sky before the slow rumble of thunder brings solace after the hot steamy existence of the past few weeks.

I have a cold beer and a half smoked cigarette. I’m feeling a little bit tired but enjoying this moment of respite as ideas float between notes and screen.

Finders keepers

We are all lost souls but some of us live long enough to find ourselves.