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What a web we weave

John Macpherson — Wed, 23 May 2012 11:47:22 +0000

The web © John MacPherson

“Yo pider! Thats a fine web.”

I told the orb-web-spider as I clambered up onto the kitchen sink at 11pm one night. My one leg in the sink, the other stretched across the large second storey window, and jammed against a wall.

A day of frantic pider effort had resulted in a fine confection of delicate beauty. But deadly.

“Pider! pider! pider!” exclaimed my two year old son William eagerly as he’d watched it hunt, pouncing from the window corner, as he himself spidered up on a piece of lunchtime cheese.

We watched the show together every lunchtime for a week.

And here we were, eyes to eye, pider peering through his eight, me peering through only one. A close-up lens.

Behind the pider the street light, thrown out-of-focus by the lens, created MY orb, ensnaring my prey in a pool of diffusion.

“Yo pider, do you see me! Do you see me?” I asked from two inches away.

And if pider did, did pider wonder at my one giant eye. And wonder what it was seeing?

Perhaps.

Perhaps not.

But as I discovered later, several of my neighbours did.

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Half a story

John Macpherson — Tue, 22 May 2012 07:33:07 +0000

I like stories.

And the web is an amazing place for storytelling. Stuff goes up, and stays there, floating about waiting to be discovered by someone and run with. Maybe to inspire something else, or something similar.

But sometimes what goes up is only partly finished. The web, you see, is fertile ground too, it lets stories grow and evolve, morphing, coalescing and shape-shifting along the way. The latent beauty of the unfinished tale.

I like that idea.

But the ‘beauty’ lies in the fact that you may not know the tale is unfinished. You only know what you know, and no more. And then to your surprise another voice speaks and an unknown detail spins your tale off to somewhere else. A place you could not have predicted.

It sneaked up on me (and perhaps you) in ‘The Decisive Moment’ a tale about my past that found an ongoing life, and the echo of other voices, in The Gift of A Story and ‘Why Telling Stories Matters’. It took only the modest amount of time I spent writing the first story to create something that unexpectedly took on a life of its own and impacted on some people I’d never met before.

Someone once said to me “If time travel really was possible, someone from the future would have come back to tell us.”

But they had not considered stories. Stories don’t just have forwards growth. Stories can grow backwards too. The web allows that magic. A newly discovered ‘fact’, grown from some carefully tended memory, written down and then suddenly noticed by someone, may fill in a gap in their previous experience, draw a line between two dots in time to form a clearer picture. If thats not a kind of time travel, I don’t know what is.

So here is a tale that I have a hunch is only half a story. It’s self-contained in its own way, and it’s my clear memory, but it has more to it, the memories of others that I don’t know, but which one of you might. Perhaps one of you may be able to find another dot to draw a line towards?

The Queen came to Fort William in 1958 on a royal visit. The Royal Yacht Britannia sailed up our loch and moored. We lived close to the pier where she stepped ashore, and we had a small boat, which was stored a mile out of town in the garage of my dad’s old schoolmistress.

Dad thought we should all go out in the boat that evening to see the Royal Yacht so off we went, our little Seagull engine and me singing along together. We did a circuit of the yacht. I remember it was huge. Dad took a photo of us. You can see mum looks….well….somewhat perplexed. She was. I remember it vividly, and much to mum’s dismay, but to my utter delight, dad retold the story to me countless times in the years afterwards as he showed us the glass slides………………..

Rule Britannia © John MacPherson

As we rounded the hull dad suddenly steered in underneath the stern, and stopped the engine. We hung there, his hand steadying us close in against the cold dark steel, concealed from any onlooker above.

“What are you doing Donnie?” said mum, curious, as dad reached into his pocket.

“I’m getting my penknife” he said cryptically.

“What!” said mum, anxiously. “What for?”

“To carve my initials in the paint” said dad smiling.

My sister’s jaw dropped. So did mums. But the knife didn’t. It rose. Up. Up into the paint.

‘DMcP Fort W 1958′ he scrawled with its sharp point.

“Donnie, Donnie for goodness sake what are you doing” said mum angry now.

“I’m leaving a wee something for the shipyard painter to puzzle over when the Britannia gets a repaint” he said “This’ll give them a smile, and make them wonder!”

And then he pushed off, started the Seagull and steered away far enough to be able to turn and take a picture of mum, my sister and me sat in the bow, with the Britannia behind…….

…..signed by my dad.

What dad had gifted the painter and me with wasn’t just his initials on a boat, it was a story and a puzzle.

Someone must have seen those initials subsequently and pondered. I’d like to think they shared their observation. Perhaps somewhere out there is the son or daughter of a shipyard painter who one evening got told a little tale by their dad of how, when painting the royal yacht, he found initials carved in the paint, but how they got there, and who created them, he didn’t know.

Are you the son of a puzzled shipyard painter?

Do you know the daughter of a shipyard painter, who might be curious about a story she once heard? Yes? Well maybe you should ask her a few questions, tell her a few facts, and maybe, just maybe nourish this story and let it grow…………..

Something from the future that informs the past. That’s the gift of stories.

Supermarket

John Macpherson — Mon, 21 May 2012 06:37:59 +0000

I’ve been threatened with ejection from my local supermarket several times. You may guess which one by the red ‘s’.

They don’t like cameras. Not inside. Nor outside. Especially ones with big long white conspicuous lenses.

Shame really, because I just keep seeing things I want to record. Interesting things.

Like the crow, in their carpark, that can read and knows its place. (“Please stop photographing or leave sir.”)

C for crow. © John MacPherson

Or the starling flock that roosts in their sign. Every winter.

(“You cant use big lenses like that here sir” What way should I use them then? ”You can’t use them at all near our store sir.” Can I use a bigger one then, from further away maybe? ”Please stop photographing or leave sir. Now.”)

S for starlings © John MacPherson

Or the deluge that bombarded the carpark one day.

sssssssssssssssssss for summer shower © John MacPherson

(“Why are you photographing that car sir?” I’m not, I’m photographing the rain? “You can’t do that here sir.” What? Photograph the rain. “There’s customer’s property, cars, in your picture. We’re responsible for customer’s cars so you can’t do that sir.” Oh ok! Why does that sign over there on the wall say ‘We are not responsible for customer’s cars. You park here at your own risk.’ That seems odd, and dare I say it, even slightly contradictory? “I’m not arguing with you sir, please stop or leave”)

Or the ice patterns in the shop doorway, on a subzero day.

Because the trolleys were left outside all night in the cold.
And then the morning sun melted the frost from them.
And it drip drip drip drip dripped off the trolleys….everywhere that people took them….
And where the sun was, and the warmth, and the man scattering salt, there was only water left to show their dripping passage.
But in the shop doorway, beneath the rolling wheels and marching feet of shoppers, the shade was bitterchill, and waiting, unsalted……

….for the drip drip drip drip drip dripping to rearrange itself into a frostflower confection of cool blue.

It was gone in a short time.

eff for eff off, no no no...... f for frost flowers © John MacPherson

So was I.

(“Please stop photographing or leave sir.”)

But I had stopped long enough in the doorway, amidst all the unobservant shoppers, to take my picture.

Some people go because it’s a ‘market’.
I go because it’s ‘super’.

And I have a loyalty card, so its always worth returning………………….

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“The Visual Chemistry of Kony 2012″ BagNewsSalon Webinar, TODAY!!!

duckrabbit — Sun, 20 May 2012 14:28:06 +0000

The blurb is below for todays BagNewsSalon. I think I’ll probably be coming at this differently than any of the other panelists because I’m not sure I agree with the premise of this webinar, that the Kony film ‘back-fired’. Backlash would be a much better word because I am of the opinion that the Kony film was a massive success for Invisible Children (that doesn’t stop me wanting to vomit when watching it.)

The Salon brings together the eyes and voices of the world’s leading photojournalists, visual academics and political and cultural observers (and duckrabbit) to analyze a current topic in visual politics in a 90 minute on-line webinar.

“The Visual Chemistry of Kony 2012” will look at how visual campaigns backfire in their success. What about Kony 2012 made it sticky visually? How did these images fuel viral compassion that was detached from facts? How do images like the one by Glenna Gordon trouble the narrative from within?

(photo credit: Glenna Gordon)

Here are the details:

Date: Sunday May 20th

Time: 10 am PST/1 pm EST/6pm GMT (running for 90 minutes)

Title: The Visual Chemistry of Kony 2012: When Viral Visuals Backfire

Where: http://bit.ly/BagNewsSalon (We’ll be holding the talk on the Open-i platform, hosted by the London School of Communications, via live audio. Below, you’ll find additional info on how it works.)

Hope you can join us!

Michael

BagNewsNotes

“The banter’s tremendous, the language is horrendous”

David White — Sat, 19 May 2012 09:34:30 +0000

Claudia Leisinger telling us a tale of the demise of the Billingsgate fish porters.

“In January 2012, the City of London Corporation – effectively an independent governing institution – withdrew all trading licences from the porters, revoking a bylaw dating back to 1876. Without this protection, the porters could legally be replaced by cheap casual labour.

The LFMA (London Fish Merchants Association) has been trying to change the porters’ working conditions from a collective agreement (which gives them collective protection) to an individual contract and has found a powerful aid in the City of London Corporation, who is currently making the funds (£2.5 million) available to the merchants to buy out the porters.

The question is, what is the motivation to so determinedly get rid of 102 working men?”

Thanks for educating me Claudia.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The Hinterlands scholarship goes to…

Peter — Fri, 18 May 2012 15:29:37 +0000

We had some fantastic entries for the scholarship place on this year’s Hinterlands workshop – very many thanks to all of you who took the trouble to send us your work. This year’s place will go to Christian Petersen. Check out his work HERE.

Congratulations Christian – we’ll look forward to seeing you on the 28 May in the Blackdown Hills.

Music night in Klaksvic by Christian Petersen

“Karma is the only justice”

David White — Fri, 18 May 2012 14:43:31 +0000

Dan Cainey has something to share:

“The work asks what it means to be a Tamil refugee, and identifies these diasporas as a form of resistance against the ongoing erosion of the Tamil ethnicity back in Sri Lanka”:

Take a few minutes to read this, thanks.

Open publication - Free publishing - More community

Thanks Dan.

#FF Funky Friday

David White — Fri, 18 May 2012 12:32:05 +0000

Well well well. You will be after listening to this:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Water. Magic.

John Macpherson — Fri, 18 May 2012 12:01:31 +0000

I like water. Water is amazing stuff.

I stood on this beach, a gentle slope, and watched fresh water from a little stream fan out across the sand.

To help it show me it’s tricks I stood in the water, facing the sun, letting sheen and glare polish its act.

It rippled and bubbled and moved and swayed around me and gradually formed itself into a wispy tendril-waving liquid creature that tickled it’s way over the sand to the sea.

Sometimes it was like a hand, sometimes it was like a plant.

But it was never like water.

Until it came over the rim of my shoe and soaked my foot.

Every sixty seconds in Africa

duckrabbit — Fri, 18 May 2012 08:33:23 +0000