I’ll get to the title eventually …
I had a bit of a head cold last week and I was a bit dozy during the one-2-one tutorial with Hayley. I usually record the tutorials as I don’t want to overlook anything, and I did, but the sound wasn’t recorded! Next day I took the train to Belfast, kitted out with a camera, pen, notebook, ‘A Sense of an Ending’ (Julian Barnes) and my head cold. My friend, Stephen, had printed 2 posters for the Riverside exhibition and I was going to Holywood to collect them. I didn’t feel like going, but I’m glad I did.
Why was I glad?
- to get the posters and have a chat with Stephen. He showed me his picture lights and I’ve ordered two.
- I can think better on the train, less distractions, or I can block then out, and I managed to recall and write up a good bit of the tutorial with Hailey.
- I have an ICM workshop with Shona Perkins (today) and wanted to experiment with ICM shots from the train and night shots in the railway station.
- Observations on my train journey.
- I’m very intrigued by the literature about ‘A Sense of an Ending’, and how they treat this fictional autobiography and the protagonists’ treatment of memories. There’s a lot of literature about this book, ranging from simple retelling of the story to heavy, academic contextualisation, which leads to the ‘postmodern’ in the title of this post. I wanted to re-read the book on the train. Only got to p.40.
Posters
Stephen does great work. We got chatting and I missed my train to Belfast. Two girls were speaking German on the Holywood platform – Northern Ireland is so cosmopolitan.
ICM
We (Kate and I) were due to have an ICM workshop with Shona the following Tuesday and I didn’t have much variety. My images were mainly taken in the woods, with a few seascapes. I wanted to try some on the train and in the station.
Observations on the train
I got a table seat on the train. Across the aisle another passenger was speaking on the phone. “It’s breaking up again. I’m on the train. We must be crossing time zones.” I think he meant the train was moving between mobile phone masts.
A heavily-built man got on the train, coughing and wheezing. He sat behind me. I had my notebook out, writing my tutorial notes before I had forgotten, and also taking notes on ‘A Sense of an Ending’. With having a cold I was paranoid about the man coughing behind me, I had my exhibition part the next week and couldn’t miss it, so I moved to the other side of the table. The man’s coughing eased, and I felt guilty, He spoke on the phone, it sounded Arabic.
When I got off the train from Holywood in Belfast, I had an hour to wait for the train to Belfast, so I went for a beer. The bouncer at the bar spoke to me, I couldn’t understand him at first, then my ear tuned in to his accent. “On the train. You were writing”. It was they guy who sat behind me on the train. I’m not the only observant one.
