Days are spent indoors and nights are plugged in. Where are the fires? Where is the fire?
It does not rest in passive watching, anaesthetized recovery or joyfully boredom. The prodding of expectations and strangle of normality.
"Single file", "Back in Line" the silent marching orders are belted out with mechanical, repetitive precision.
Take a photo of oneself not for internal contemplation but in the hope of leading the pursuit of feeling slightly better than the next.
It creeps up slowly. Fuel prices, distance travelled, virtual communication, the traffic wars, the canned food, the loss of place.
Concrete, wherever I walk, concrete.
And don't get me started on all the advertisements. The warmth, the old fashioned, the relentless smiles, the slightly moving camera angle to shave off the harsh edge. of carefully crafted production. The lies. They are all lies. The notion that your life is no good. Time to buy your way out of poverty.
It creeps up slowly.
If you want to move on from the plastic and return to the timber. If age is better than uniformity.
If it gives you a chance to use hand shoe tacks that were left over from your great grandfather and his hammer that his hand held though it never held yours.
Back Dated Furniture lead on.
For me this meant upgrading a newish plastic stool for a chop shop side table. A table that like humans bares the scars of age. Its watermarks and cracks a testament to its longevity and stubborn perseverance. A side table that was saved from a landfill tomb and operated on like a old citrus tree in need of a prune.
Here are the photographs,