Thursday, June 2nd, 2022Inspiration in the Real World
I took this photo at work the other week. Photography is not my main gig at the moment, I work in construction doing home remodels, and, sometimes, I walk into a person’s house and become captivated by the architecture. Below the window, out of frame, is where the dining room section will be. Imagine eating a late lunch, or having a cup of tea, and sitting there with the light hitting you perfectly - blessed by a wide, tall window. I’d never get depressed.
High windows just kind of do it for me. I was initially struck by the light being stretched downward across the wall, and then I noticed the blue sky and the warm tint of the paint.
Say thank you to a beautiful thing every once in a while. We tend to take it for granted in this world.
Tuesday, May 31st, 2022Social Media Will Be the Death of Us All…
This is my first blog post ever, and there’s nothing exciting about it. I’m using this as an outlet to fill the void that ‘social’ media has dug into me over the years. I hope that something good will come of this. I know that if I put enough energy into talking to you, fine people (through this one-way mirror), that I will eventually inspire someone to do something of value. This is a proclamation of my life’s mission! And my proclamation is: I shall, within my lifetime, do all that I can to ween people off of the teat we call Social Media. How I accomplish this goal, I am leaving entirely up to chance - and to you, this may seem lazy - but hear me out. It would be ironic for me to use Instagram or Facebook to spread this message. Secondly, I believe in chance. Whoever comes across my website, and this journal, and reads it, and is inspired, is, to me, a success story. They will go out, inspired, and inspire other people - naturally - not by doing dances on the internet and selling hand lotion that comes out of a bag made from artisan hemp.
So far, I’m two days clean…
I’ve gone through phases with social media. My main one for a while was Instagram, and if you want to see the remnants of over three years of posting somewhat regularly, and jumping through whatever hurdles necessary to get noticed on that app then you can find it with this tag - @qnnsntn. You’ll see that I clocked in a whopping 190 followers…wow…success. No one ever wrote into my direct messages for work or a commission. People, I’m sure, just saw my photos and went, “That’s nice.” and then kept scrolling. Three years. You grind and hustle to impress people you hardly know, so that you can fulfill a promise that you made to yourself. That promise being that you said you would be successful after high school, or college, and not get stuck in some 9 to 5 pushing pencils for the Big Man. And while I’m not pushing pencils, I can’t say that I’m successful. Social Media has let me off right where it picked me up - hopeless, looking for a solution. This is my solution, a good, old-fashioned blog. Read it and weep. I'll let Google lead people to my door. People who, for some reason, are searching 'Big Man', 'Pencil Pusher', or 'artist prick' will eventually find this blog post and fall down the rabbit hole. Those are the kinds of people I want looking at my work.
I first joined Instagram in 2011, and I did so because there was a girl I had a crush on in school, and I thought that by joining some satanic post-post-modernist cult that I would get her to notice me. She eventually did, but I do not credit Instagram or Snapchat for aiding me in this quest. What I had to do was use my vocal chords and explain how I felt in person. Too many of us rely on the ice-box we call a smart-phone to do the dirty work. This has turned us into cowards. While I understand that plenty of people have found success via social media, they typically do so by belittling themselves - making cute, easy to produce, recognizable crafts. Work that is below themselves, but aesthetically pleasing enough to get an inquiry from a tasteless user. I know I can be harsh, and that everyone is just out there trying to get their bag, and that there are some really talented people on social media making it work, but the whole circus has really gone off the rails hasn't it?
The need to take a break came my way in 2020 - the greatest year on record. I felt that social media was driving me instead of me driving it. Take a photo and post it. Write a poem and post it. Post it. Post it. Post it. Who gives a fuck if it’s good? Post it. This was my life for a while, and it needed to stop, so I set out on a journey to fall in love with photography again for love’s sake. I started taking pictures for a reason, and I needed to rediscover that part of myself. This era of my life is captured in my Directions project. Inspired by the Miles Davis record of the same name, I wanted to take my abilities and creativity to new heights. Directions, in that regard, was a success. And then…that old bitch came creeping in. It had a shrill voice and it said, “Who’s going to see this Quinn? You have to post it…online.” Fuck me. So I redownloaded Instagram, intent on showing the whole world what I had created over the course of six months. So what happened, you may be wondering? Well, at the time that I came back to Instagram in Spring 2021, its infantile feature Reels was in full force. Instead of posting what I had created, making a photo book and selling it, or going all-in on being a fine art photographer I became addicted to Reels. If you ever want to see me turn into a shell of myself, put me in front of a video poker machine or strap me down to an office chair and give me a smart phone with 100% battery and Reels already loaded into the gun. I ended up posting less than a quarter of what I had made, and what I had posted received little to no engagement. Directions is available here, however, and I know that someone will see it, but the pressure is off and it feels great. Get it if you want it, I don’t give a fuck. Anyway, this dance went on for over a year and here we are now…in AA. How does it feel? Shitty now, but just you wait, the sun will come out sometime soon.
Buckle Up…
Things may get a whole lot worse before they get better, but as long as there are people like you, willing to engage with a writer's work in long form, then there is hope. We need a new kind of cult - the kind that looks a lot like the old kind, but doesn't involve murder, or a messiah complex. The kind of cult that isn't a cult at all but rather a mentality. A mentality that is detached from longing for dopamine when a post gets liked. A mentality that just kind of vibrates through society and suddenly things are better and you don't know how or why they did, they just ended up being like that. We need to say no to new things more often, because new does not equal better for you or society. Buckle up because, just in case things go south, you don't want your head going through the windshield.