All photographs this week taken within my home in case you hadn’t noticed. Over the last year I have spent a gob smacking, eye watering, jaw dropping, nose shattering (ok u get the gist) amount of time indoors. Like 99%. And within these walls I have been able to do very little physically or mentally so the bulk of that gargantuan piece of time pie has been spent staring into space. Major Babycakes to ground control…check the sofa, stereo on…
The only thing I’ve been able to do to pass the time is listen to music. I would be dead without music. My constant companion. My mood regulator. My daily joy injection. There are some people with my condition who can’t even listen to music because they are too sound sensitive so I am truly grateful and something I never take for granted.
Once you have been housebound for an extended period of time you never take anything for granted again..and being stuck inside this comfy prison I find myself more with gratitude for the things I have than disappointment for the things I don’t. It’s warm. It’s comfortable, I have high ceilings, I have good food and there is no chance of being shivved. I also have an amazing warden (with benefits).
A very close friend of mine is going thru extreme cancer treatment at the moment and is also full of gratitude for what she has as oppose to just focussing on the relentless shit show she is dealing with. We share a similar outlook and this is not a coincidence. The more you suffer the more you to appreciate life. The more you endure the hard shit the more you can enjoy the good shit. Unless you start a pity party for yourself. That’s the only thing you cannot do. So the hardships everyone is desperate to avoid will actually bring them what they are endlesssly seeking..true happiness which is happiness that does not require anything other than what you already have.
When everything is taken away from you, careers, friendships, pursuits, lifestyle choices..all the things you think made you you, you would think you would somehow cease to exist, or that you will be a less of a person but when they are all removed you are still you. In fact, you are more you because you realise that all these externals are not the things that define you. Without anything you are already everything you need to be. I feel more me now than I ever did and I require no outside validation to prove it.
This perspective is priceless. Would i have chosen to have four years of my life taken up with a chronic debilitating illness with a barrage of symptoms day and night to get it? Of course not, im not a fucking masochist! However i now choose to focus on what it has given me rather than what it has taken away. Eckhart Tolle in the Power of now (which am currently audiobooking) states with every moment “act like you choose it” and I love that. It stops you being a victim. It empowers you.
Don’t get me wrong, its been a fucking slog. And there were days when I thought I would lose my mind. And yet here I still am. I still exist. Nothing can take that away from me..well apart from death obviously..that’s a given..but until then Major Babycakes is chuffed to be alive, sitting on a rock floating in space around a giant fireball in an area so vast it apparently has no end. And the stars look very different today…
All photographs this week are taken of people I encountered within a 100 yards of my home. When you are mostly housebound you are starved of human contact. It is a very solitary existence but I am incredibly lucky as know a lot of the people on my street to say hello to and some to have a lil stop and chat with.
And so even though I was often only able to get to the end of the road and back I would more times than not see someone I could interact with, even in the smallest of ways. Didn’t have to be long. Didn’t have to be meaningful but it meant a lot to me. And it was great just to hear someone’s voice that wasn’t my own. My experience has meant that I have become very comfortable talking to myself but its a poor substitute for an actual dialogue with another human being. And it’s also a little disconcerting.
So these brief encounters with my neighbours became my lifeline and am truly grateful for I think I would have gone a little insane without them. Obviously fessing up to talking to myself all the time doesn’t really lend much support to that theory but there you go.
In a recent study on loneliness they discovered that it wasn’t just our strong relations with immediate family and close friends that mattered to our well being but also what they called our weak connections. These are small interactions you have with neighbours, passersby, local store workers and park people if you have a dog and apparently they are as vital as we are social animals who need to feel part of a group. They might seem slight but they make a big difference.
For me they were a godsend because I was not well enough to have people visit for the most part and I also couldn’t really handle talking for more than a couple of minutes. And weirdly being alone for vast quantities of time hasn’t made me less social, it has made me even more so. I always enjoyed talking to people but I would now literally chat to anyone because I have been so deprived. I obviously had Mrs B who I could never have got thru this without her but invariably by the time she got home I was toast and couldn’t even talk so am so thankful for my weak connections as they gave me strength when I needed it the most…
The top photo is Phil who lives two doors down from us and he is a lovely man who is always pottering around on the street so see him more than most so was always appreciative of our lil chats on the stoop as was often the only contact I had. And for the record the other people this week I do not know and did not speak to. They were merely passing. As was I.
So much for pictures only to ease meself in..I was just excited to be back :)
Sorry folks for lack of transmission…took another dive so been recuperating…to be honest I haven’t really found my feet since the beginning of this year and have been mostly housebound but was determined to continue doing this blog as gave me a focus and a purpose and kept me connected to the outside world. And I managed to maintain for the most part..albeit in heavily restricted circumstance. Every day I try to get out of the house and go for a short walk, to stretch, to attempt the microscopic amount of exercise I can currently tolerate and to stop myself going bat shit crazy being stuck indoors 24/7.
So all photographs you have seen this year were taken within 1500 steps of my flat as that has been my total capacity for walking. And yet, as small as my world has shrunk I found I still had a vast array of material for observation, thanks largely to the teeming life present on Portobello Rd. And no matter how shit I felt I always saw something I wanted to try and photograph. And a lot slipped through my net but I still managed to capture some gems along the way. When I am out the other side of this thing my next photo book is going to be called 1500 steps and will show that even in the smallest of spaces there is always still so much to see…
But right now I need to focus on my recovery some more so am going to take an extended break..as my dedicated followers will know I always take off August anyway so have just started my summer hiatus a little early this year…
All shots this week part of my ongoing series: “R u talkin to me“. Now that I am back out and about I am currently getting all my info from the street which are when you think about the original information super highway (that really looked like it was gonna be a keeper for a while). Why don’t I look online or read a newspaper like everybody else? Well this is because I have essentially cut myself off from all news sources, firstly by necessity but now by choice.
For the most part of the last 18 months or so I have been unable to read more than a couple of lines of anything before my brain capsized. So consequently my ability to stay up with current affairs drastically diminished. I quickly went from being a voracious news hound to a lackadaisical (such a good word, really don’t use enough) uniformed mutt.
At first it was incredibly frustrating but overtime a positive emerged. Namely I had been liberated from the doom scroll. I was no longer being relentlessly bombarded by the daily horror show and my mood instantly improved. I felt calmer. More at ease. Less angst ridden. Well not by the news at any rate. I was blissfully ignorant and found I was filled with less daily dread yet as my cognitive ability improved I started glancing back at the headlines. I couldn’t help myself. But every time I did my mood plummeted and it also affected my health. It just made me feel, why am I even bothering to get better? It killed my will to improve and so in the interest of self-preservation I am now keeping the relentless feed of misery at arm’s length. I can’t let it back in yet, not while I am just starting to find my feet again..
I used to feel you had to be informed, it was some sort of moral obligation and that the old ostrich approach was what has got us into all this mess in the first place. But the way I see it is that the things that really need to be happening aren’t happening, so why do I need to pay attention? Why should I check in just to watch the powers-that-be not doing what they should be doing? And then having to listen to the relentless bullshit as to why they continue to ignore the all encompassing tidal wave that is coming towards us. And obviously this isn’t the first time. They have been ignoring the advice of experts on a multitude of matters for a very long time..a few examples incoming..
When our Government was informed that inequality was the root cause of most of the society’s problems and that equal societies were better for everyone did they listen? did they act? did they fuck..
When our Government was informed that excessive testing harmed young children’s educational development did they listen? did they act? did they fuck…
When our Government was informed that it would be better across the board to legalise drugs did they listen? did they act? did they fuck…
When our Government was informed that we must phase out fossil fuels and invest in renewables immediately to have a chance in hell of maintaining a liveable planet did they listen? did they act? did they fuck!
They ain’t listening to the information being fed to them so why should we waste our time listening to them? They clearly aren’t paying attention to what needs to be done so what’s the point of paying attention to them? They are not concerned with our well being. Or our future. I mean, anyone who wants to ban wind farms in the middle of a cost of living/energy crisis when it’s the cheapest cleanest energy available in this country is not someone who is woking with your best interests at heart It is someone you need to remove. As well as every other elected twat protecting the oil industry instead of the people they represent.
It’s like getting in pest control to fix your rodent problem only to discover they’re in cahoots with the rats. As I have said before our leaders are not leading the way, they are in the way. They are problems not solutions and their actions infuriate me to a level of anger I cannot still currently deal with so until I can I will avoid avoid avoid. Although as you can see I am getting my rant back on so feeling better ;)
And so the other day, I bring my camera out for the first time in months as I finally feel well enough to go out once more in search of the ultimate picture and as I hit street level (not literally, I didn’t fall over, this isn’t a tragic story) I am met with this glorious sight…the low winter sun beaming straight down onto the pavement in front of me, literally lighting up the path ahead of me, beckoning me forward and ushering me safe passage through the darkness..did I take it as a sign? Fuck yeah.
Having been housebound for so long and not been able to get further than down the road and back I feel like someone who has just got out of prison..again. The air is crisp, the colours are beautiful. I have a large unbreakable grin on my face. I can walk further and faster than I have done for months and that is nothing short of magnificent. I gaze in wonder at everything around me, like a child mesmerised by even the tiniest of things. I will never take this for granted. It is glorious.
I’ve had enough of being on the subs bench, watching life from the sidelines. I want back in. And I’m not going to stop till I am fully ensconced back into the land of the living. Yes the world is full of horror, chaos, injustice and anxiety but being part of life is a rare and beautiful privilege and you gonna spend a fuck load of time not in it so you might as well soak up as much as you can…
You remember when I said I was going to reveal all this week as to the connection between all these random photos I’ve been posting…well I hate to break it to you and I know you must be beside yourself in anticipation and I’m sure you haven’t slept since this began just wondering, contemplating, analysing what it could possibly be but I’m afraid you are going to have to wait one more week…soz.
p.s apologies for sending a few multiple emails this week. I have been trying to get to the bottom of why my photos don’t appear for some people in the body of the email like they used to. One photo suddenly appeared the other day and I got all excited but it only works if its a photo that comes from my phone rather than my computer which makes no sense.
I finally found out its to do with certain mail programmes blocking remote content from loading (yes apple i’m talking to you) and not in my control. Apparently its a security ting to stop spam but its a little over zealous and my pics have been ensnared in the process. There are forums dedicated to this shit I swear and there are ways to disable but very hassely and sure you aren’t gonna wanna bother. If not I will keep trying to see if I can fix this end somehow, but in meantime you might just have to click on title of the post to see these frankly unmissable pictures..;)
Stolen portraits this week featuring people at the older end of the spectrum. The demographic wasn’t consciously intentional but I have found I am drawn towards photographing the aged not just because they have a lot of visual appeal but because you can see more of their life in their faces. The trials and tribulations of their existence are etched into their lines, whilst the eyes reveal more than they would maybe wish. On a practical front they also move a lot slower so are easier to capture.
This is of benefit to me as I am also running slower at the mo and this elderly focus is because I am sort of living the life of an old person currently. I shuffle about at a snail’s pace, have aches and pains and make a day out of going to the local shops and back. So think this affinity could definitely be putting them more on my radar.
I used to look at old age as something undesirable. My Grandma always used to say “It’s no good getting old” for but now I see that it is a sign of success. It means you got to live a life and that is a gift regardless. And I have also worked out that age does not matter. But health does. As does functionality. Without either you have nothing. It doesn’t matter how old you are, it’s what you can do that matters. If you are fit you are fine. If you are not you are not.
From a youthful perspective old age doesn’t look like fun but when you are young you fail to appreciate that existence is everything. Quality of life is crucial to happiness but you will continually move the goalposts as to what is acceptable or tolerable because the will and the need to survive overrides all other feelings. You will endure whatever life throws at you because in any capacity it is better than the alternative which is not living. Yes I know our molecules will never die and we will be re-incorporated into the cosmos for all eternity and who knows what might follow (altho the fluffy cloud harp option does seem unlikely) but it won’t stop any of us clinging on to this precious beautiful fleeting life with all our might. I mean, we might as well, what else are we gonna do?
What do all the people in the shots this week have in common? Well nothing other than they are all sat down. This is actually not really to do with them. It’s actually all about me. Why? Because I am currently living life sat on the subs bench..and have been since I last did this blog. Actually, to be fair, I probably get the equivalent of one minute per game to shuffle around the pitch before being hauled off on a stretcher. It’s quite a frustrating way to live.
It takes forever for my body to recharge and then I am a spent force within a nanosecond and I then have to start the process all over again. Like filling up your car at the petrol station but instead of it taking a couple of minutes it takes a full week and then it will only get you to the end of the forecourt before conking out and then you have to then push it back to the pumps and start all over again. I am basically the never getting anywhere boulder pushing ancient Greek dude Sisyphus (encapsulated in glorious GIF form below for a visual on my current existence)
What is also beyond infuriating AKA driving me fucking nuts is that I am constantly yoyo-ing between relapse and recovery. I feel ok for a bit and then I overdo it and I am tossed back in the hole (which I have been in and out of 3 or 4 times since I have been away) And for the record, me overdoing it means doing something so inconsequential it probably wouldn’t even register to you as even doing anything at all. Like speaking
The worse thing is that each time I feel better I think this is it, I’m out, I’m in the clear, it’s all over..but invariably it isn’t and the merry go round continues. The disappointment is kinda crushing tbh. I have likened it to being on death row and getting a reprieve, but when you get to the gates they say, sorry mate, there’s been a mistake, you’ve got to go back in. And so you go back into your cell and await the next false reprieve and so on and so on..
And yet just like them old dumb boxers I keep getting knocked down but I keep getting up again (yes I have had a lot of time to think of analogies that describe my situation) Guess I just don’t know when to quit. I am currently on the ropes and getting a proper pummeling but I ain’t giving up just yet. In all honesty I haven’t started this blog up again because I was feeling better, I just need to do something as oppose to nothing..the relentless boredom coupled with not being creative was really starting to do me ‘ed in.
I actually read this great quote (thanks @verseandproseau) which has helped propel me back into action…
“If you do not answer the noise and urgency of your gifts, they will turn on you. Or drag you down with their immense sadness at being abandoned.” (Joy Harj)
And I have had quite enough of that as it is and it’s not just me either. The Long Covid community as a whole feels like it has been abandoned, dismissed, ignored and left to cope with a condition that has taken us all totally out of the game (back to the football analogy) and with no real way of knowing when or even if we will ever be back in play again…
Medical moan disclaimer: I share all this not for sympathetic gain but because most people now know somebody who has L.C and so I think it’s important to explain how much it affects us because on the outside we look sorta normal. And also, as it’s kinda dominating my life at present it means I’ve been up to sweet fuck all other than this crapola and therefore don’t really have anything else to report for now..but don’t fret, I haven’t returned just to make this a platform for my own misery..I will also use it to highlight other miseries such as impending climategeddon, war, the cost of living crisis and the never ending moral decline of this country..just to keep your spirits up..;)
Actually I might just stick to pics for a while..ease meself back in and all..
Words on the streets this week with some comedy commentary to ease us back into proceedings. Although I think the above wall scrawl requires a more serious take. Am assuming it is a reference to the protest bill that recently sailed through the Commons and is about to be passed by the House of lords. If it goes through it will effectively make protest illegal in this country and propel us in a single bound away from a democracy and towards something much more sinister. 1984 might finally have arrived.
While a giant chunk of the population was banging on about their freedoms being taken away, incensed by a piece of cloth that covered your face and marching in the streets to demand their right to flout restrictions that were initiated to protect us, there was a genuine assault on our freedom being quietly passed through parliament. And yet strangely none of these ‘freedom fighters’ had a problem with that which is ironic, as once this bill gets ratified, they won’t be able to protest about perceived threats to their freedom because a real one would have taken away their right to.
It’s pretty scary shit and once again our complacency and apathy will be our downfall. To be fair we have been distracted by this endless pandemic but while we were consumed by it, the war on the virus was being used as a very effective smoke screen to re-shape our society into some ting a bit more Orwellian. #killthebill
p.s Thank you to everyone for all their warm messages welcoming me back. Very much appreciated. I feel like i just got out of solitary. It’s good to be back in the fold.
I’m detecting a smidgen of sarcasm…whadya reck? And yet there is some truth to this statement as the death rate from Covid has plummeted by 92% in the U.K since January so staying in actually did stop tons of people dying.
As we lurch out of 4 months of lockdown we might be currently winning the war on the virus but the war of information has been truly lost. Everyone seems convinced they are right but no-one appears to agree on anything other than those who think differently to them are wrong and have somehow been duped, misled, deceived and manipulated.
Maybe we have all been brainwashed. How the fuck would you know? Truth is our minds have been moulded since the day we were born. Pulled around like putty and moulded into shape by a multitude of pushy sources. Education, parenting, the media, your peers..all have had a hand in dictating how you think. We feel that our thoughts are our own but they are anything but. It’s just they have been forced upon us so relentlessly that they feel like we instigated them. As if they were formed in a pure and virginal state from within. And yet there are almost no opinions in our heads that have evolved independently.
They say you are what you eat and for our entire lives we’ve all had to chow down on an endless stream of ideas that have been shoved down our throats , just like those poor fucking geese that are force fed to make foie gras pate. We , however, are just being fattened up on a diet of bullshit and it takes a strong will to keep our eyes away from the clickbait and an even stronger will not to be taken in by it.
It is ultimately up to us to try and evaluate all the information we consume and come to our own conclusions but we are still at the mercy of our sources. It has been revealed that since the arrival of the never-ending feed people do not spend enough time disseminating what they read. Instead everything is absorbed and accepted wholesale then regurgitated back out again with the click of a button, without barely a moment spent establishing how factually correct the information we are spreading is. We become the conduits of lies because none of us have the time or can be arsed to fact check that shit before we pass it on.
Next time you are banging on about something with absolute certainty, defending it against all counter arguments and convinced it is nothing short of the word of God, ask yourself these questions…where did I get this information from? Do I know for 100% it is true? Should I be so adamant with 2nd hand opinions? Does this nugget of info deserve to be presented with such conviction when chances are, I probably just picked it up from godknowswhere and have no definitive proof it is actually correct.
I have a mountain of information in my head but I have no real memory of where it came from. Did I read it? Did someone tell me at a party? Did I imagine it? In general I have no idea but once its on the inside and been assimilated into our minds our brains decide it is gospel and that is that. It doesn’t care what’s real. It just wants its world view reinforced for the rest of our lives. This is confirmation bias and we are all at its mercy. So sadly not only can you not trust your sources but you can’t even trust yourself.
So where does that leave us? It means we must remain open & fluid, a work in progress, not set in stone. We cannot become a fixed moment in time or else we will not continue to evolve. We must always be willing to take new shit on board.
I once saw a massive sign in a field in the middle of rural America as we were driving and it said: “Don’t have too much of an open a mind or your brain might fall out”. Eek. (scared face)
So this is all really just to prepare you because as we all emerge from our lockdown cocoons and are re-integrating with each other after a very long time with nothing but our own opinions for company it might come as a bit of a shock to find that not everyone thinks as we do.
Lockdown closed everything so what did people do? They got around it. They moved their activities outdoors. Onto the streets, into the parks, wherever they could continue their endeavours whilst the buildings that housed them remained inaccessible. I think what the solutions to the restrictions have shown is that it was never about the place, it was always about the activity. It has meant that we do not need to be quite so literal anymore. If you put art on a tree it becomes an art gallery. If you do squats on the sidewalk it becomes a fitness centre etc etc.
The question is..will these alternative locations still be used when the venues return? Or has outdoors officially become the new indoors? Yes, it’s a little weather dependent but it feels like a revolution has begun. We can now think it much more fluid and creative ways about where and how we do things. Necessity is the true mother of invention and if there is one thing the pandemic brought that was positive it was the notion that you do not just give up. Nothing just stops. You find a way. You make shit happen. That is what we do.
I’m sure when everything finally re-opens we’ll go back to doing stuff the old way but if ever there was a time to reassess how we do things it is now. There’s a fork in the road folks, we can all see it, s’up to us which path we take. Maybe the purpose of this never-ending shit show is to reveal a way to emancipate ourselves from the rinse and repeat process of endless consumption and fill our lives with other pursuits that are more fulfilling and ultimately more sustainable..and hopefully we will now realise that the only real restrictions are the limitations of our own imagination…
Faces are this week’s theme…or rather the lack of them. What can I say…I miss ’em. Eyes are great and everything, windows to the soul n all that but they’re not quite enough to go on. To me there is no such thing as an uninteresting face. If you look closely they all tell a story. Our entire lives are etched on our faces. Wearing masks means we are missing a mountain of unspoken communication that emanates from every encounter we have. It connects us in ways we are not even consciously aware of but it is happening constantly as we go about our day. I miss smiling. You can achieve a lot with a smile. It generates positivity and unity, two things we desperately need at the moment so it is somewhat a cruel irony that we are currently prevented from doing so because our faces are now mostly obscured from vision.
I went to college in Glasgow, where if you make eye contact with someone, you smile at each other. Standard practise. I personally thought this was a good policy so when I came back to London I continued with this approach but was rarely returned with anything other than a glance that indicated that they most likely thought I was basically a loon bin. This did not deter me and have continued regardless ever since. The ratio of return smiles in this city isn’t amazing tbh but very occasionally you get a proper smile back, a smile with no purpose other than itself and that is always a beautiful thing.
I even miss this hit and mostly miss attempt at facial interaction. I always found it a fun game. Like trying to make someone like you who you know really doesn’t. I wanna be able to smile at strangers again and have them not smile back. I miss them trying to work out if they know me or not. I miss watching them look over their shoulder in case it was in fact directed at someone behind them. I miss seeing their face twitch and contort as their brain can’t quite decide whether to commit to a return smile or not. This generally ends with the corners of the mouth going up but not quite bringing the rest of the face with it. But mostly I miss the looks of vague disgust as people are actually pissed off I have attempted to yank them out of their default hostile stay away from me misery mode. So rewarding.
We are clearly gonna have to mask up for quite a while longer sadly and it is unfortunately essential in this ongoing humans vs virus war (who’s winning? Kinda difficlut to call at this stage wouldn’t you say?) but I really yearn for the day when we don’t.
The theme of this week’s photographs is isolation. Turns out it’s rubbish for humans. Who knew? Well, now, after a year of restricted living, most of us. And yet there are many people who have suffered isolation’s negative effects way before Covid turned up and I hope we now make more efforts as individuals and as a society to connect to those who are alone since we’ve all now experienced how much it impacts on your mental wellbeing.
We have all been forced to separate and withdraw from each other. Taken out of the communities we were a part of, banished to our bubbles, denied contact from those we love. It has taken a toll and even after we are all allowed to interact once more, it might take sometime for us to heal the damage that has been done. We will have to unlearn our insular/unsocial ways altho hopefully it will be like riding the proverbial bike.
We were told ‘we are all in this together’ but the opposite was true. We were pulled apart and that clearly hasn’t been that great for anyone. So when this is all done and dusted, we are going to have to put ourselves back together again…just like Humpty Dumpty. Actually, maybe not like Humpty Dumpty. I don’t think he ever got put back together again, certainly not by the kings horses…I mean, how could a horse put back together an egg? They can’t even hold things let alone use shit like superglue which is really fucking fiddly..ok, forget about Humpty, bad eggsample, where was I? Oh yeah, isolation sucks but we’re gonna have to suck it up for a little while longer..
For now, we still have to hold tight. We must show restraint. We still need to stay the fuck away from each other for a little while longer. We must not blow all the progress we have made. We must make this the last lockdown. We cannot do this again. I know we are all lockdown weary but the next couple of months are crucial. The virus has not gone, it has just subsided. And it won’t stop replicating just because we have decided we’re over it. If we do not remain vigilant at this stage we would have all suffered this shit for nothing. I seem to remember saying all this after the last one. Well, that went well didn’t it? Could we really all be so dumb that we would just make the same mistakes all over again?
If you do want genuine freedom, which is not this halfway house masked up keep your distance bullshit, but unimpeded interaction, free of worry and fear, then you gonna have to still rein it in for now. Not because they told you to but because surely you want to? Just so we can get back to what we had. Isn’t that what we are all still striving for? There can’t be anyone on Earth who is actually happy with this type of existence? I wanna see people’s faces, I want to hug my friends, I want to talk to randoms again. I wanna be open not closed. Carefree not cautious. I just wanna be a human again.
I got vaxxed this week. I got the Vauxhall Astra Seneca. All went well altho did have a full on fever for 24 hours which was a little unpleasant but felt totally fine after that. The only thing is, and not sure if anyone else has experienced this but when it’s really quiet I can hear this voice which feels like it’s coming from inside my head…and it just keeps saying over and over again..buy microsoft, buy microsoft, buy microsoft…bit weird don’t you think?
Some days I wake up, have a cup of tea, bit of toast and then I go to Venezuela and visit the tallest waterfall in the world, or I go to a beach in thailand, or scuba diving inside the wreckage of a WW2 plane..and I even sometimes go into space. I actually go into space quite a lot. The first astronauts were obviously beyond excited at the thought of being amongst the stars but what they didn’t realise until they got up there was that the most breathtaking sight was not looking outwards but instead looking backwards and seeing our own planet. This life changing experience known as the ‘Overview effect’ is something I have done many many times over the last few months. How have I done all this? No, this has nothing to do with hallucinogenics. I have been inhabiting the wonderful world of virtual reality. I have been nowhere but have ‘visited’ more places than I have maybe done in my entire life.
The world is currently ‘closed for business’. Travel is off the menu. Being able to go to another country is virtually impossible at the moment but it is ‘virtually’ possible. And so whilst I wait for the real world to return I travel in VR. On the Occulus quest 2 (which is the headset we have) they have these 360 degrees immersive films and so at the click of a button you can suddenly be on the streets of Havana, swimming with sharks or skydiving over the alps. You feel like you are there because, just like in real life, you can look all around you. You are not fixed to one viewpoint. The other day I was in a panda enclosure in Japan just inches away from the adorable monochromatic bears and utterly immersed and then thought to look behind me and found a massive crowd of Japanese tourists taking pictures. And so I then started watching them. And that is exactly is what I would have done if I had been there . 360 gives you choice. 360 gives you peripheral vision just like IRL (in real life)
When I am at a gig I don’t always look at the band. I look around. I check out the crowd. I soak it all in and that is what you can do in VR. Unlike other visual mediums your viewpoint is not being dictated by someone else. The shots I have posted this week (screengrabs from the headset) do obviously not do justice to the experience whatsoever but here are a couple of clips just to give you a lil idea of what you can see, albeit within the confines of a frame that is not there if you watch in VR.
With the headset on you are not just observing, you are actually in it. You know it’s not real but your brain doesn’t. It responds as if you are present in that environment. It fills in the gaps. It connects the dots. It also does this in real life. I have quoted this stat several times before (cos I find it so mind-blowing) but your brain only gets 10% of its information from the optic nerve in your eye, the other 90% it is builds on the inside from information it already has simply because its quicker. Your brain is so fucking fast you don’t even realise it is doing it but what it effectively means is we are already living in a virtual world of our own making. So seeing life through a headset really isn’t that different.
I would obviously much rather be experiencing these things IRL but in the absence of it, this is something. I tend to ‘go to’ places of natural beauty and tranquility because it is the opposite of city living but you can pretty much go anywhere on Earth. In doing so you are transported beyond the confines of the walls that surround you. You get to see places you would never have ever gone to without ever leaving the comfort of your own home. You don’t need luggage. You don’t need to go through the hassle of airport hell and you don’t need to spend any money whatsoever on accommodation. You don’t even need to get dressed if you don’t want to. I actually ‘virtually travel mostly’ in my dressing gown. Why? Because I can.
The pandemic has proven one thing, we can live local lives. We can communicate and work via video if needsbe. It is maybe not 100% desirable but it is doable. What this enforced pause proved is what they said couldn’t ever possibly happen, happened. We all ground to a halt and life carried on. Maybe there will be a time again when travel is ok again but in the meantime we must learn to stay put. Previous generations barely left the town let alone the country they lived in their whole lives. And now the Brexit portcullis has come down, trotting round Europe, which was where most of us in the U.K travelled to, just ain’t gonna be as easy it once was. And if staycations aren’t your bag, maybe a virtual holiday will do the trick.
The reason I actually got the headset in the first place was so that I could hang out in cyber space with my brother and my nephew who both have one too. In the app Bigscreen you can ‘meet’ in an environment of your choice (lush living room, drive in cinema, mars) and interact as avatars. Within moments you feel like you are both in a shared space chatting away as if you were in the same room. It is way more connective than a phone call or a vid chat. You really get this sense that you are hanging out together.
It’s kinda nuts but once more the brain readily accepts it and you forget almost immediately you aren’t speaking to the actual person. Obvs it is not the same as being together IRL but it’s pretty damn decent. And during this period of isolation and separation it has proved invaluable. I have always been against tech if it got in the way of real life interaction but in some ways, this is an improvement because if you are talking to someone with a headset on you have their undivided attention. They aren’t distracted, they can’t look at their phone. It’s actually better.
The weirdest thing is when you take off the headset you feel like you are leaving the real world not the other way round. It is a bit of a headfuck tbh as the constructed digital world feels like an alternate realm of existence so immersive that when you are inside it you never think for a nanosecond you are actually in an environment that is made up of 0s and 1s. The longer you are in it the weirder it is when you return to reality because it feels less somewhat less engaging than what you have left. And we are just at the forefront of this technology. It is still a bit ‘blocky’ and there is sometimes a lil lag on the frame rate which can give you a bit of motion sickness but its only going to get better and better.
I have been charting the battle between digital living and the real world for years since smartphones became ubiquitous in our lives. I have seen reality slowly then rapidly lose its dominance for people’s attention and have had to acknowledge that since the world was shut down by this pesky spiky virus, the war is over. Digi won. Reality lost. So if you cant beat em, guess you might as well join em. When the real world returns as it once was it might not be so desirable to be in VR but I can’t imagine I’m ever going to get bored being in space.
Having said all that I have always been, and will always be of the opinion that there is no experience in the digi world that even comes close to its real life counterpart but as we need to drastically scale back flying around the planet in order to reduce carbon emissions. We must do this. We just cannot continue as we have been and so, VR might just be our salvation. It could be just the thing to help us wean ourselves off jetting across the globe at the drop of a hat.
If it significantly cut down aviation then all we would then need to do is cut down meat consumption and cut out fossil fuels and we can ensure that future gens have a liveable planet. Life will not only go on without these things, it will go on…which is more than it will do for our species if we don’t make these adjustments. Remember, not saving the planet, saving ourselves..
P.S You can also be a jedi and shoot zombies on this thing. Like fa real. Just sayin’
P.P.S I should mention this is not a plug, I ain’t getting paid to say this shit. Sadly not on the Occulus payroll but I bloody well should be.
It is just short of a year since me and Mrs B got Covid and we are still suffering from it. Our bodies basically never returned to normal. Our energy levels never recovered. We are simply not the same people we were. And we have no idea when/if we will be again. And the jury is still very much out as to what exactly is going on. It’s still too new so they really just don’t know yet. It could be that it is lying dormant in our system and flares up when we get run down. It could be our auto immune system attacking our antibodies because it falsely thinks that the virus is still active. There is some consensus to suggest it might be do with a depletion of oxygen levels which causes inflammation but they still don’t know what is causing it or what might cure it. There are lots of theories but no answers at this stage. Only more questions. And you can drive yourself crazy thinking about it.
I am writing this to share my story. Not as a cry for help or to seek sympathy but so that others who are suffering (or who live with people who are) might read it and connect with what I have to say and feel less isolated in their experience. We were “lucky” that two people very close to us also developed Long Covid (L.C) at exact same time so we formed a little support group to share symptoms and to help remind ourselves that we weren’t going mad and something was actually desperately wrong.
We got it in the first wave and so we are essentially L.C Veterans but if you are one of those who got it in the 2nd wave over Xmas and are still symptomatic 2 months later and are desperately trying to work out what the fuck is going on, this is for you. They think anything from 10-30% of people will go on to develop L.C after the initial contagion which would mean anything up to half a million people in U.K might now have it to some degree which is a staggering amount.
This is also to help clarify to people who think it’s ‘just like the flu’ that it isn’t. Some people only get ‘flu like’ symptoms but that doesn’t mean it operates the same as the flu. Has anyone ever had flu for a year? No, so it’s not the same. I’m not even sure why people need it to be the same. And to be sure what it is when no-one actually knows yet seems a bizarrely committed conviction. It also bears a resemblance to Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) but again it is not the same. It’s its own disease. It’s brand new and operates unlike anything else before it. And it seems to affect everyone differently which also makes it unique.
I am also writing this as a warning to those who have not yet got the virus that it is definitely not something you want. You might think you are healthy and fit and it won’t affect you badly but L.C has struck people across the board. There is zero correlation between former health and developing long term symptoms. It’s just a lottery but this is not absolutely not a game you want to play.
I would also have, at one point, maybe written this to try to convince the disbelievers that it was real and not a hoax but if it hasn’t gone in after a year’s worth of non-stop news coverage and over a 100,000 dead (U.K) then it’s not going to so I won’t waste my breath on you.
I can only talk from our own experience in terms of how it has affected us but from talking to others & reading other’s stories there is a consistency. And that consistency is ironically its utterly erratic nature. You do not go in a straight line. You do not go from worse to better and stay on that trajectory. We had it bad for the first few months then improved for a couple of months and then have had sporadic relapses ever since which varied in degrees of severity with little rhyme or reason to how much you were affected. And you can flit from fine to frazzled and back again on a daily basis.
We eventually worked out that any sort of over-exertion could set us off. Anything that gave us an accelerated heart rate. Exercise intolerance is one of the key components of L.C. If you try to build your strength & fitness back up you invariably get punished for it. In fact if you overdo it at all you get punished for it. I got caught in a storm in November and ran up a steep hill to get out the rain and that put me down for a month. We had a 10 minute dance in the living room last Wednesday and then became instantly run down for a few days.
This is just to give you an idea of how little room for manoeuvre you have with this thing. It’s like there is this invisible barrier and you don’t know you’ve hit it until it’s too late. Now at least we are aware what sets us off and we make a decision whether to say fuck it or not. You basically have two choices with L.C – overdo it (which is almost any activity) & suffer the consequences or take it ridiculously easy and stay functional. It got so ridic as to how little could set us off we ended up making a joke of it so we could deal with it..taking the rubbish out? That’s two days in bed. Doing the laundry? A weeks’ relapse. Going to the shops? That’s a month in a coma. You get the gist. And the joke is, it actually helped. Humour always saves the day.
And you might read all that in horror but in the scheme of things we don’t actually have it too bad. We are extremely fortunate it never went to our lungs and our biggest symptom is feeling utterly wiped out a lot of the time. There are people who can’t get out of bed, who are constantly short of breath and suffering a multitude of other symptoms and who are all besides themselves with anxiety over it. One of our support group had a severe physical collapse a week or so ago and had to call an ambulance as unable to breathe properly with chronic chest pains which was obviously terrifying. But as terrifying as that sounds and was, they are one of the lucky ones as didn’t end up in hospital on a ventilator. They were able to get their breathing under control and are now in recovery. There is a possibility they got reinfected with Covid on top of Long Covid/Chronic fatigue and are now waiting on tests to try to ascertain exactly what exactly triggered such an episode after months of feeling fine and nearly a year after first contracting the virus.
At this stage any conclusions as to what is happening to us all are nothing more than supposition and as I said, you can lose your mind trying to work it out. You play detective constantly, analysing everything you have done to see if you can pinpoint what it was that made you take a turn for the worse. It makes you incredibly fearful of doing too much and even when you feel better it is sometimes worse because you still have to tip toe around to not risk setting it off again. But you just gotta get on with it. It is vital that you deal with it rather than let it define you. It’s all about managing it and not letting it break you mentally.
Maybe because we have had it for so long we have reached a level of acceptance about it which is crucial to be able to take the knocks when they come. For sanity’s sake you must reduce your expectation for improvement. If not, relapses become too demoralising and can seriously affect your mental health. Your mindset must be strong in order to cope with the back and forth. That is not to say you shouldn’t have hope for a recovery, you must, but you have to be realistic. We are a year in and it is still effectively ‘Day 1’ because I know, even though I feel reasonably okay at the mo, I could run round the block right now and that would do me in.
I think personally, we are also better equipped to deal with it because tbh we were not leading that healthy a lifestyle in the first place. We were always exhausted from our relentless lives and in recovery from big weekends so feeling sub par and wiped out is something we knew all too well and it has sort of helped us cope with L.C. I have nursed a splitting head from hangovers so many times during my adult life so it sort of prepared me for having what is pretty much a non-stop headache for the last year. We also ache like 80 year olds and every muscle in our body feels like it is permanently pulled. Again, as I suffered with a severe back condition for years so am used to high and constant levels of pain which has also helped me cope with this.
I think it is infinitely worse for the fitness lot as the drop off is much larger. What is tough for us personally is that we had a seemingly inexhaustible amount of energy. We were always on the go. Never stopped. We had a rep for it. If there was one phrase everyone uttered to us when we described what we’d been up to was “I don’t know how you do it”. Well, now we wait patiently until we can again but those energy levels might never return. And as depressing a thought as that is we are sill here. We live, we breathe. we exist. We are the lucky ones.
I should also point out that it isn’t just physical exertion that can wipe you out, its mental too. In the early days just a single phone call could make me have to lie down for a few hours to recover. There is also the dreaded ‘brain fog’ which zaps your mind into uselessness all the time. You just hit a wall and your cognitive function ceases completely. Before L.C I could always just ‘push on through’ if I was tired. But you cannot do that with this because you will be punished for it. This is my advice to those who are struggling…you have to give in to it. If your mind and body need rest give it to them. If you don’t it will only get worse. The key is to stop before you get tired so you don’t wipe out. Take lots of breaks. Give yourself massive amounts of leeway. Do not try to behave like you used to because if you push on through and wait till your wrecked you will get seriously slam dunked for it.
Until they have any genuine answers or solutions we all need to just stay calm and get through it as best we can. We are now taking a variety of supplements (happy to divulge if anyone’s interested) that we think might aid our immune systems to recover and to boost our energy levels. Maybe they are helping & maybe they aren’t. There is no real way of knowing as there are too many variables to work out what is working and in all honesty it doesn’t really matter. You have to feel like you are doing something. Regardless of what you administer as a treatment you still have to will yourself better. The mind and body are one system. They are not separates and feed off each other, the wellbeing of one affecting the other and vice versa. So to have any chance of recovery you have to believe improvements can be made. Scientists have proven that the placebo effect is present in all medicine no matter what. Belief won’t get you there alone but it is an integral component to all treatment.
The one thing that has undoubtedly helped throughout is meditation (which we do twice and day) as it makes you calmer which helps with the stress and anxiety of having an ongoing illness and it also gives you much needed energy when you have none. I cannot imagine how we would have got through it without it. We did a course at the London Meditation Centre but again, if anyone wants to know more about that please get in touch.
I am obvs hopeful we will get fully better at some point but am also realistic it might be a while. My heart goes out to everyone who is dealing with this and if anyone wants to get in touch to discuss please do. Unfortunately, if you have not been through it is difficult to understand how it feels which is why I felt it was important to flag all this shit up in the first place. If you are suffering and your immediates are telling you it’s all in your head, politely tell them to go fuck themselves and go and talk to people who are able to relate to what you are telling them.
I will leave those who are suffering with a positive..as this is the global number one health topic at this moment in time and for the foreseeable future there is consequently going to be a relentless amount of research being conducted by the medical world and this is cause for hope. Give ’em a bit of time and they’ll no doubt get to the bottom of it and hopefully be able to prescribe something that will be able to tackle it. Hang in there people, help is on the way…and in the meantime you must learn to help yourself. Learn how to function in dysfunction. Learn how to not lose your shit over it. Learn how to beat it by not giving in to it. Laugh in its face. Don’t forget, you are a human being. You are powerful, resilient and extremely adaptable. You will not be beaten by it. End of.
P.s Please share to anyone you know who is dealing with this.
I love that whoever made this list only managed to complete one task (and the easiest one by looks of things) before either throwing it away or losing it. It kind of sums up for me how we all feel we should be productive during this ongoing period of inactivity but are having varying degrees of success. Some folk are actually getting things done whilst others are permanently hovering around the contemplation stage. I am partly in the former group but frequently in the latter. Eg: I have finally painted the bedroom wardrobe (I bought the paint just under a year ago) but my summer shirts are still in the dirty laundry, yes I know, its February. Don’t judge. I figure I still got a few months till I need ’em again.
As I walk around at the mo it is very clear that people are clearly clearing out a ton of shit (can you have too many ‘clears’ in one statement? Clearly you can) While actual humans are very thin on the ground, their discarded objects are making a consistent appearance on the streets. These items have lingered in the shadows for years, niggling at us from the periphery of our consciousness to be thrown out but now lockdown has shone an unbearable light on them and they have now finally been cast asunder. (note to self: use the word asunder more) In fact, these pavement dwelling objects are about the only thing you come across as you take a break from your own steaming pile of shitty tasks.
Over the years we have all convinced ourselves that if we just had a bit more time we would finally get around to doing all those things that permanently lurk on the edge of getting done. But even after almost a year some are still very much ‘undone’. Turns out that time wasn’t the problem, it was desire. Turns out that even in the midst of the most prolonged period of inactivity in living history there are things that you simply cannot ever be arsed to do….do not see this as failure, see this as liberation. You now no longer have to concern yourself with these things ever again.
Our previous lives were chock to the brim with ‘doing things’. Let’s be honest. It was exhausting. You lunged from one thing to the next with no break, no reprieve. The in-tray was never empty. Life never stopped..or it didn’t…until now. So now that it has, why are we so desperate to fill it in the same relentless way? Why don’t we just enjoy the nothingness? Embrace the quiet? I think it’s because when everything goes still we are left with ourselves who, it turns out, are possibly the last people on Earth we want to be alone with…but what are we so afraid of? How bad can we actually be? And all we have to do to find out is to do sweet F.A. That feels very doable to me.
I think I touched on this in the last lockdown but I actually think doing nothing is very underrated in our society. I am actually now developing a book/podcast/cult called “Stop doing, start living”. I am currently at the research stage which involves doing nothing for long periods of time. It’s arduous work but very rewarding and I hope all the effort I put in now will hopefully one day lead to people putting in no effort at all…and that doesn’t just have to be my dream, that is something we can all not work towards…
Last lockdown I showed you what I could see out of my window but right now there isn’t a whole lotta happening out there as we’re still deep in mid winter. So instead, as my world has basically been shrinky dinked to the walls I am currently surrounded by, I am showing you inside my home…for the first time! Dum, dum, daaaaaa!
My home location was once just a part of my life but now, as it for all of us, it has become my entire existence. Lockdown has made reclusive cave dwellers of us all, regardless of whether we were before or not. Our dwellings have effectively become comfy prisons as we wait for this wave of the virus to subside. It sucks but it has to be this way if we want to have any chance of coming out on the other side of this thing.
And even though being in every single night is drastically different to my B.C life, I have had to settle into this reduxed version of living. Acceptance will save the day & all that. And mainly because the alternative is the path to which madness lies. You must accept what you can’t control for any degree of sanity or happiness and right now this is way beyond all of us. The entire human race is in a hole and so we must be patient and wait till we are able to get out. This is the way as Mando would say.
After such an elongated period of restricted living it does feel it is changing us & the world around us in ways that we cannot begin to quantify until it’s really over. And who knows when that will be? The longer this goes on the more surreal it becomes. And also the more normal it feels which is slightly worrying. We’ll all ultimately end up as anti-social agoraphobic anxiety ridden germ freaks…that’s possibly already happened…if so, we will need to unlearn what we have learnt.
Our previous lives now seem like a fanciful dream. I am currently working on some prototype photography books (which I will hopefully share with you soon) and they all focus on dance & music events with masses of people all over each other and it looks like an impossible world, a world we no longer inhabit.
One thing I have noticed as I stare at all these people rocking out to the music they love is how carefree everyone looks. They don’t look like they have a trouble in the world. They have a lightness about them. When I look at people at the moment, they look heavy, burdened by the weight of it all. It makes me realise we didn’t really have anything to worry about back then…even though we were convinced we did.
Ironically I associate lockdown with being outdoors in nature. This is because when everything is closed and there is nowhere else to go I go for walks in my local parks. This is what kept me sane during the first lockdown. This is what I did over Xmas and this is what I am doing to get through this next period of restricted living. But this is no hardship. Being amongst nature is both calming and invigorating. I find as soon as I step through the park gates and am surrounded by trees rather than buildings I feel instantly more relaxed. I brief a sigh of relief as I leave tense city streets behind and enter the soothing world of nature.
We have to remind ourselves that even during this ongoing and overwhelming experience of global seizure and disruption, the world of man is only one aspect of living and if we are able to just turn away from it and gaze instead upon the natural world that we are a part of, yet disconnected from, we can find not only solace and contentment, but guidance and purpose.
To be able to endure the harsher conditions of winter, trees suck the lifeblood out of their leaves, sacrificing them so that they can live through it. We must also get through this season by withdrawing ourselves and reducing our existence. Like the trees we must do whatever is necessary in order to survive.
We are so disconnected from nature that we talk about it as if we are not a part of it. As if it is something separate. The same way that people talk about traffic, as if does not include them, even when they are in it. And that, in part, is why we are in the state we are in.
We must reintegrate with the natural network that we have removed ourselves from so that we can restore our wellbeing. If that sounds like old hippy shit to you, leave your phone at home and go for a walk amongst the trees and tell me that you do not feel better after you return.
As winter fell this year and the trees shed their leaves I have been truly in awe at their skeleton structures, as if I am seeing them for the first time. This is either because I have been observing them more frequently throughout the year and so their transformation is more apparent…or it’s possibly the magic mushroom chocolates which might have contributed to this heightened awareness – it’s just so difficult to tell ;)
Whatever it is I feel more connected to nature so now when I look at the ‘design’ of all the branches on all the trees I see that they are identical to the ‘design’ of our lungs (see above) because that is exactly what they are. They are our external lungs. And we need them to breathe just like we do our internal lungs. To destroy them, as is happening all over the world at the most relentless rate, is the most masochistic act of all time. It is pure self-sabotage. Surely we want to survive? And when it really comes down to it, that is all that nature demands of us and ironically we need to protect it in order for that to happen..
Hope everyone is doing ok. I woulda normally wished you a happy new year but I was late starting this year (trying to get my head in gear) and it also just doesn’t seem that appropriate righta bout now. So instead I will just say please look after yourself and each other and let’s get through this…
…accidentally sent today’s post yesterday. Was clearly keen to get it to you. So as I’m here sayin soz I thought I would leave you with this parting shot which was taken of the Electric Cinema on Portobello Road coincidentally last Christmas..I feel there’s a message in there somewhere although what that is I’m not exactly sure exactly ;)
So I will say Happy Holidays after all…enjoy yourself the best you can..if there is one thing that this whole thing has taught us is that we must savour every moment because who knows what the fuck is round the corner…
