Sunday Sunday. In the woods.
I mostly sat outside reading today. If I think about global politics I just get frustrated so I’m trying to just get into my creative headspace. Joseph Campbell is not necessarily the best coping mechanism, as he is looking at the ways in which stories are hardwired into us, and the things that are annoying me the most right now are the easy stories being constructed or augmented by friends of mine who have evolved the pattern matching we need to escape predators, but not the critical thinking we need to escape manipulators. The algorithm is serving me so much wilful rubbish that I’m getting a skewed perspective. I’m constantly astonished that people can delude themselves into all the anti-science/anti-community over time stuff. As a result I’m fed it by the internet, trying to coax me into posting something snarky.
I went to Jempsons yesterday and bought up loads of hearty food so I could just stay here today and know that everything was in hand. I’ve eaten really well and just hung out with the cats again. I took my DJI Neo drone out today, and messed around a bit working out what is possible easily. It doesn’t go very high, which surprises me. You can get perspective with it, sure, and once I’ve got used to it I’ll be able to make it all work nicely without crashing it. It’s a starter piece of kit. I’m not going on any walks in the near future, but I want to have a straight line between shooting with it and editing the footage before I do, so I’ll likely be messing around with it whenever possible. I’ve even upgraded the memory on my phone, just as I was constantly running out of space whenever I tried to do anything. Video editing was never gonna happen. Now perhaps I’ll be able to get some stuff done. Not that I’m doing anything interesting right now. But practice makes perfect. Maybe I’ll record myself doing something mundane and then shout-narrate it in the most annoying voice I can muster so it sounds like all the rest of the stuff out there. Say a few earnest things. Try and work out how to make the soundscape consistent. There’s a lot of noise. I’ve always liked going towards noise. And the comforting thing is that most of the stuff out there is objectively terrible so there’s no performance anxiety.
But I quickly got bored of tech and decided to just chill with the animals and the sun. Birds have started coming to the fatballs I brought yesterday. The cats are communicative and friendly. I had a momentary issue when the neighbour’s dog got in and wolfed Rajah’s bowl of dry food. But largely I’ve been on my own with a book in the sun. It doesn’t get cold until late evening, the garden gets great light. I’m calm, and there’s a whole week left here. mmm
AlBarclay 