Takashi's return; "21"??

 The photos on this roll of film lay dormant in a drawer for two years with nothing but a "21" scratched neatly into the side of it. I always assumed the 21 meant "21 photos taken" but lo and behold, a fully exposed roll of 36 negatives. So who knows what it meant. Sometimes I think I do this stuff on purpose to introduce minor doubts into my future-self's life. I have actually considered doing such things in the past and for all I, with my atrocious memory, know I have gone through with many of them. It's like I'm living a self-inflicted, boring version of the movie "Memento".

Anyways that aside, I was really excited to discover the bounty contained in that film - photographs of the first house gig Paul and I organised. It was supposed to be the last Fairy Fort gig of the summer, before Takashi went home to Matsue to get going on his plan to open a café. But the gods of that crappy sort of rain that doesn't really rain but just sort of hangs around and clings to everything like a jerk had other plans and the fairy fort had to be abandoned in favour of Paul's sitting room. It was still great! And was the start of a series of really nice house gigs. Takashi's presence in Galway was short-lived but so hugely affected those he met. For me, he completely opened my eyes to the potential in everything: a discarded pipe for a bugle; a bag of crisps on the head for percussion; a field for a concert venue... It's coincidental these photos appear now, as Takashi's coming back at the end of next month and has been in touch recently about doing a tour with a few friends (Darugaries and Rokumantai). Yesss!

Some other out and aboutings:

Several seconds before (by Michelle) (though I'm possibly not right about that)

 

Happy Bad Day 2011

Best birthday ever. (Photo is unrelated)

Old, for Instants

 I took these Instax photos on the 26th September 2009 at my first ever gig, in a shed behind number 236 South Circular Road, Dublin - aka The Box Social.

I love a contact sheet

Contact sheets are my favourite things to make in a darkroom. The photographs are so small you can't really see the imperfections that you know are there and you will eventually see when you enlarge them. On the contact sheet every image looks like a perfect little self-contained universe, neatly arranged and segmented along with the others around it. They tell a story in a way the single image can only really hint at - like the short synopses you'd read at the start of each chapter of old adventure novels. Plus, they're real easy to make and sort of satisfy the need for instant gratification...

These are all quite badly 'scanned' (I just photographed them with a digital camera), hopefully I'll get to use the scanner at school and get some decent files, but for now I just want to make sure I've recorded them. The one above is about the trip I took to Limerick and Cork supporting the 202s and Patrick Kelleher. About half the images were destroyed either by my increasingly fault-ridden camera or just by a freak roll of film, which is pretty disappointing but I'm happy with what wasn't destroyed.  

Christmas at home, taken with a borrowed camera.

I had the idea one day when I was home and killing time before work to just quickly take vertical photographs of windows, but it branched out to include rivers and archway entrances, and then I kind of forgot about the windows a bit. I had the resulting contact sheet in mind; I think I liked the idea of applying uniformity to subjects that were only tenuously related... I had the word 'Ways' in my head while doing it. It was fun, running around trying to spot specific subjects, and I tried to continue taking only vertical photos for the rest of the roll, though I obviously forgot what I was doing at one point.  

Ghosts of Miscellaneous Past iii

Yet more photographs from the forgotten past. These are from August and September last year and span from the time I didn't know what I would be doing to the time I knew what I would be doing. Though I've sort of ended up back at another time of not knowing, but in a different way. I think I have more choice now or maybe it's just a change of perception or wotsit. Anyways, I took photographs and these are they.

http://www.myspace.com/agitatedradiopilot

http://www.myspace.com/cjoynes

http://www.myspace.com/musicfordeadbirds

http://www.myspace.com/schooltourmusic

homesounds

Ghosts of Miscellaneous Past

I developed some rolls of film that seem to date back to as far as maybe May last year. Lots of stuff forgotten and forcefully remembered; other stuff just confuses me - I wonder what the heck some of the photos are of.