Now…it’s all we have.

I’ve finally arrived in Seron, Southern Spain, after a 2000 mile, 5 day road trip. I’m here to shoot a project on British expatriates, migratory birds who flew south and never returned, for one reason or another. Maybe they’re here for the weather, maybe they’re running away? Or hiding? Or lost (Spain is a vast country) …in fact, given my current marital situation, I’m beginning to wonder if this entire project might be cathartic? Who knows.

A couple of days before I left home my closest friend emailed me and told me that I needed to read ‘The Power of Now’, by Eckhart Tolle, on my journey south, I said I would, even though I didn’t have the faintest idea what it was about.
Now then, I don’t read a huge amount, I don’t have the patience and I’m very easily distracted by ideas and random thoughts, so I downloaded the audio book off iTunes, all 8 hours of it, I was also taking into account that even in Spain, reading and driving is probably still illegal. I’m sure that anyone who is aware of the book will recognise the irony in what I’ve just written? I did, within about three minutes of pressing play…
I think different people will get different things out of this book, some might see it as a self-help manual, others could view it as a one-way ticket to an existential crisis. I found a lot of it very helpful, although at one point I did think I was being tricked into religion, although this proved not to be the case, I just hadn’t been listening properly, or as Tolle puts it, I had allowed myself to become “unconscious”. If nothing else, I found Tolle’s almost mono-tonal German accent very soothing…oh shit, perhaps I’ve been brainwashed?!

Anyway, this isn’t a book review, I assume most people come to this blog for photography related topics? Well photography-wise, there’s not much to tell, thus far. All the images here were taken on my iPhone, from a moving vehicle and then processed in VSCOcam. I’ve taken quite a few Polaroids and Fuji Instax images, I did try to reproduce them for publishing by photographing them with my iPhone, but that didn’t pan-out as well as expected, and I obviously didn’t have the space to bring a flat-bed scanner with me…

Also none photography related – I put my passport through the washing machine and tumble dryer a few weeks ago…well, that’s actually a lie – it was about 9 months ago, and I’ve travelled with it on several occasions since, it’s been to France, Spain, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Finland…every time I present it at border control the officer on the desk looks it over with disgust, I shrug my shoulders and spin my hands, which is the international sign language for “Yeah, I put it through the washing machine and tumble dryer yesterday…have mercy”. When I get home I’ll get a new one, if I get home.

I wonder what the international sign language is for “Mr Kneen, your passport is invalid and you look a bit dodgy. Please come with us, you’re being deported”?

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