Atlast

I feel like every time I look at these photos I'm a little surprised, I don't know why. They're the last photographs I took while still living in Dublin, my last couple of weeks there, though some are from home also.

My most recent, long suffering pair of shoes, donated to the side of the river and the world, generally.

A long walk and a high place.

Towards the end of the course I started taking the sort of photographs I was taking before; at least, it felt that way. Photographs that were not connected necessarily by theme, but more by mood or function; namely, these things I saw made me feel something and photographing them was an attempt to record that feeling. Or maybe an attempt to articulate that feeling in some way. Though I know it's inevitably futile, my response to these scenes now is, through the filter of memory, irrevocably changed. Still, what else can I do? I'd forget it completely otherwise.

One last trip to the Tesco down the road. Soon after taking this, the last frame of the roll of film, I saw a beautiful fox roaming the streets of an estate near my house. I stopped and watched him for a while, he spotted me at one point and stared hungrily back for a few seconds before slinking off behind a wall. I went home and ate whatever awful food I had, went to sleep and moved out the next day. I felt pretty good about that.

Bandcamp

I've started putting music on Bandcamp, to slowly extricate myself from the tentacles of myspace. First thing there is a new EP called "Million Seconds" and hopefully I'll be steadily adding to that soon, though because the site requires the highest quality files it takes an eon to upload anything. This is good in the long run though, as users can then be offered the choice of downloading the music as a whole load of different filetypes, which is nice.

Witches Club/Fairy Fort Number III

Poster and photo by Takashi Kumagai

This was probably the busiest Fairy Fort so far - there was a photo exhibition by myself and Aaron; a spud barbeque; the mysterious disappearance of a large bag of charcoal; delicious rice krispie buns (made by Suzanne); more (mostly ineffective) lights than ever and three acts -

High Quality Potatoes, an improv act originally composed of Jimmy, Takashi and I but when Jimmy had to pull out due to being stranded in Belmullet Ger kindly stepped in. We were pretty ridiculous, but nobody threw charcoal at us so I guess that's a sort of success. Aaron took some great photographs:

Brigid Power-Ryce played an excellent set - her vocals have this eerily lugubrious tinge to them that was perfectly suited to the surroundings, compounded by her oddly off-tempo 12-string guitar strum. When I first saw her play live I just couldn't get into it, but with each successive performance I've liked her more and more, and am definitely a fan now... I took a couple of photos only, cos I'm very conscious of the noise the shutter makes at the Fairy Fort.

Peter Delaney has always been one of my favourite Irish musicians, one of my favourites full stop. (He also takes mighty photographs) He's miles away from a lot of stuff I would normally listen to - jauntily strummed melancholic sea chanties, just him and a ukulele mostly. He cuts a pretty unique figure when you see him perform, and completely draws you in, till suddenly you realise you're leaning in and listening intently. I somehow never realised how dark his lyrics often are, though they're usually tempered by a poetic sweetness, and sung in such a way as to lull you into thinking you're listening to something upbeat and carefree - "The Guest" is a good example of this. It's an eight minute ukelele epic and I've been listening to it on his myspace daily for the last two weeks. Goes one chorus:

"You've been by my window/
Howling in the night woods/
Perched above my front door/
You steal into my bedroom"

before reverting back into the simple, carefree sounding ukulele riff. It's a completely disarming and haunting song, and it's only a demo - I can't wait to hear it finished. Again, I only took a couple of photographs; I must get a quieter camera...

Some photos of the exhibition - Aaron's photograms and my miscellany:

I should have taken more, and taken them better.

Miscellaneous shenanigans -

These last were mostly taken by Aaron.