Undercurrents and Transitions
I felt it in the very first hours of 2025. I wrote down becoming on a piece of paper, without any deep inkling of what this meant, but sensing shifting currents underfoot. Subterranean truths threatening to emerge. Now, I find myself making decisions based on changing aspirations.
It isn't much of a secret that I'm deeply affected by the state of our world. If you read this blog you're well aware of my thoughts on the matter. Possibly too aware. But it's not just politics or technology, not just the threat of a neighbour devolving into lawlessness, or the Web's individuality being swept away as we speak in favour of centralized black boxes. I look at humankind, the societal choices we've made through the centuries, some that are barely a decade old and that we simply accept, wholesale and equally, as our new irrefutable truths. As The Way It Is. As if our past never existed. I look at billionaires wealthier than nations building lavish bunkers and spaceships while children starve. The barons of our freshly Gilded Age, always wanting more because accumulation is dogma, and power is all, a whispered word from gods that gives them license to plunder. Inalienable rights for the very few. Nothing matters. Not people, not fairness or democracy or the fate of our heavily taxed ecosystems. Let the floods come. Let the wildfires.
We'll just fly to Mars, baby.
I'm tired of the spectacle. This greedgluttonyfest, these lookatme express ramps on which everyone hopes to crash, to shine, and flash, ball 'o flames/ball 'o scorching light. 15mnWarhols begging for fleeting eyes and likes. Tired of watching abdication in the face of tyranny. Of systems that refuse to protect, and reward destroyers posing as builders.
I know I can't change any of it, at any scale that matters, but I can at least avoid investing in it. So—bit of a stretch here but bear with me—I'm retiring. I've hinted at it before but I'm moving ahead. What that means isn't entirely clear yet, even though the decision's part of a process that's been brewing for a few years now. The pandemic woke something up that never went back to sleep. The funny thing about it is: it won't change much. Adjustments, yes. Scaling down... very likely. But I'm not retiring from an office job: I've had the privilege of leading an interest-driven life and I still want to write, record music, shoot pictures, tell stories. I still want to learn and explore, to publish and connect, share what I know if it helps others. Photography as a service, however? The business end of it? I'm done with that part.
There's a famous quote from photographer Bill Cunningham (in Ryan Holiday's The Daily Stoic):
“The late fashion photographer Bill Cunningham occasionally declined to invoice magazines for his work. When a young upstart asked him why that was, Cunningham’s response was epic: ‘If you don’t take money, they can’t tell you what to do, kid.’ ”
I'm looking for new avenues. New ways to exist, and to create.
In short: meet the new boss... Same as the old boss.
