Shadows

I am interested in shadows because they are the presence of something absent, which is light. I have in my time taken some good pictures of shadows. I can’t find them right now, but they exist digitally backed-up in an archive I’ll never dig through, probably with a filename composed of a string of numbers.

The other thing about shadows is that they represent the present. (I’m talking about time this time, not light.) The reason I’ve got lots of photos of shadows (somewhere) is because I couldn’t capture them any way else. A shadow doesn’t hang about you have to either capture it, or let it go. There’s the third option of appreciating it, but then you try telling someone about a good shadow. It’s a bit like describing cloud formations to someone who wasn’t there – it looked like an elephant or the boot of Italy; its not that interesting or impressive without the morphed cloud.

This reminded me of cognitive evolution and the origins of art. When did humans start producing art? Great question – no definitive answer. Something like 300-100,000 years ago. There was this all-encompassing theory that academics called the Palaeolithic Cognitive Revolution, which occurred at this time; when homo sapiens developed tool-making techniques, started burying their dead, evolved speech and began making art.

One of the questions that jumped out at me was what on earth possesses a being to make a living breathing thing you can see into a two-dimensional image?

It’s true when I see a dog, I love them and would play with them for hours, but I would never have thought to draw one. Why would I? I can’t draw shit and I’d much rather make the most of my time with a dog. However, there are some people in society who have talent and may be able to draw the dog pretty well. Even if you had the talent, what would it really take to make that leap of inspiration: to see the dog then draw the dog… it had to happen for the first time somewhere, but how?

Another thing learnt from my archaeology and anthropology degree was that most things that survive in the archaeological record are the rarest things. Isn’t that ironic? The majority of stuff made or used by humans is lost over time because it’s either rubbish i.e. detritus (like our takeaway containers), or not important enough to keep (like the stuff in our shed.) Also, they’ve got to last! You can try and hold on to your favourite blanket, but that’ll be gone in 300 years because it’s a dirty piece of fabric. So basically, barley anything survives from 300,000 years ago.

Can you imagine? No, because it’s too darn long ago. Could a rock survive that long, maybe, if it wasn’t being bashed against another rock for 1,000 years and turned into sand. It’s kind of stupid thinking about stuff that far back, but people do and Good on ‘em! What great guys and if you want to do some extra reading go for it here and here. (Although I’ve lost the reference to whatever I’m about to say, so you can take it or leave it.)

We have some cave paintings that survive from that far back, but they were painted on the inside of deep cave systems and that’s why they’re still intact. There must have been other art made by probably not-so-good artists drawn on the outer side of rocks and carved into tree trunks. All washed away or decomposed. Like artists today who make sketches to practise, there would have been the Palaeolithic equivalent of sketching going on on organic materials.

Maybe some being saw a shadow on the sand and quickly sketched around it

TA-DA-

Could it be the first ever 2-D representation of something in the world?

Capturing a moment to record it; to possess it; when the figure who’s shadow it was moved away, was that the leap in human cognition which made it possible to create art?

Consuming and crying

I have been crying a lot lately. Like untowardly crying. At things that don’t usually make me (or anyone stable) cry. I was reading a free magazine. Picked up unthinkingly from the vendor who shoves them in to our underarms, never making eye contact, continuously thrusting bundles until someone takes it. I take it. On the morning train - I am reading about a photography exhibition at a gallery on the Southbank, I could do that during a lunch break? A black and white portrait of a front living room, mantel shelf heavy with trophies and mascots and wallpaper peeling under colourful frames of loved ones, deceased, young, alive. An upward angle shot captures an ageing woman walking laboured to the front steps of her local church. It’s like her religious commute. Going to church religiously every Sunday for a sermon and now I am crying. Not floods. Never gushing: I cry like the robots who think they’re human in Blade Runner 2. Silently crying for no real reason standing in a packed train carriage at 8:54am.

Then the Royal Wedding took me by surprise. I was sat cross legged on the living room floor, sorting boxes of old belongings in to piles for the charity shop and then, the bin. The wedding was on in the background but my mind was engrossed in some old Adidas tracksuit bottoms, sporting stripes the colour of fire. Until this rude trumpet chorus made me look up. On the screen flared a white robed queen and the church doors were flung open, light broke out over her smile and I was crying. Again like a robot. One tear that rolls off in to the shadow cast by my right eyelid. Always the right tear-duct.

I am slowly realising that my twenties were an age of anger. I could be angry at everything! It was like a hobby that became part of my personality. I loved being vocal about stuff that didn’t matter, for example, my hatred of glass modern buildings*. Recently though, I can't muster up the vitriol and instead I am overcome by emotion. Here are inexplicable things that have made me cry in the past weeks. 

Hearing a nature podcast about the decline of moths in Britain

Catching a glimpse on ITV of the NHS Heroes Awards

Seeing a music video where an old woman with push-permed hair dances with an invisible hula-hoop

And all of these things caught me completely off-guard. I had no control over my weepy eye but I just let it happen. All Hang Out. Whatever, I don't pretend to understand why. But I cry. It has something to do with nature and the passage of time. It has something to do with feeling older and how the world carries on without you and that's fine. It doesn't matter. It has something to do with memories that don't seem to go backwards but are laid out before you, as if you have a million memories to be had but are not sure when or how it's going to happen. Uncertainty in certainty, that's likely what it is.

*I still stand by this

Eras

It was like what it was in the 90’s

                       It could have been the 60’s

                                        And it felt like our 20’s