Stuff from the guts of Australian writer Nigel Featherstone
May 19, 2012 in The Snap Gallery | Tags: ancestry, ‘Through Irish Eyes’ by Patrick O’Farrell, home and the never-ending quest to find the bloody thing, Ireland, Ode to my Family, thanks to my old school friend for sending me the Youtube link in the first place, The Cranberries, video photomedia
‘So the movement,
the restlessness,
the striving,
the sense of never being at home,
and of being anywhere and everywhere
as at home as one might be.
And the impetus to get on,
even if one hardly knew the answer
to that question of questions
– get on where and why?’
Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com.Ben Eastaugh and Chris Sternal-Johnson.
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May 20, 2012 at 9:16+00:00May
Mark William Jackson
I read, and looked, and wondered “this is a poem, by Nigel? Nigel doesn’t usually write poetry that I know of? Did Nigel take these photos? They flow like stills from a television set and work so well with the words, was this the design? Which came first, the words, the pictures, did they come together or totally separate creations?” I got to the last line and don’t care about my own questions any more, they all work so well together.
May 20, 2012 at 9:16+00:00May
Nigel Featherstone
Hi Mark, the text is from a book called ‘Through Irish Eyes’ by Patrick O’Farrell. It’s a quote that I’ve had hanging around for years, in fact ever since I spent a month in Ireland in the mid-nineties. (Needless to say I fell in love with the place.) The images were taken from the video for The Cranberries’ ‘Ode To My Family’ – I screened it on my crappy old laptop and then took the shots with a digital camera. When I’ve done this before, I’ve cropped the images and adjusted the colours, but the ones used above are the originals – I like their rawness and imperfections. I’m so glad the sequence works for you.
May 20, 2012 at 9:16+00:00May
Geoff
The images flow like a sequence as from a half-remembered dream … I’m glad you clarified where they were sourced from because they triggered a memory. The images sit nicely alongside the text you’ve chosen too. A Nigel/O’Farrel/Cranberries mash-up … nice one!
May 21, 2012 at 9:16+00:00May
Nigel Featherstone
Thanks Geoff.
The idea of visual mash-ups: I like that, especially that I’m a big fan of musical mash-ups.
PS As to the source: there was a hint in the tags, but perhaps it wasn’t enough of a hint. But I do like how Mark thought of it as being poem-like – I’m sure the original author would approve of such a response (well, like all authors, any response basically.)
May 21, 2012 at 9:16+00:00May
Geoff
Tags … Oh who reads those … even though I like to include what I think sometimes is an oversupply on mine own!
I also thought of it as a poem at first glance … especially as I have been increasingly setting my own images to short poems as a way of further expressing the thoughts going around in my head at their creation … it struck me you were perhaps doing the same.
May 21, 2012 at 9:16+00:00May
Gabrielle Bryden
I thought you had written it first, as well – I love the whole sequence and mood created – really cool.
May 21, 2012 at 9:16+00:00May
Mark William Jackson
Tags are like warning labels on medicine bottles, only really relevant after the fact when curiosity (or medical emergency) cuts in.
Visual mashup does sound very cool, and extension of cutup, but you’ll need a Retrospector style “DJ” name.
May 21, 2012 at 9:16+00:00May
Nigel Featherstone
Hi Mark, love the medicine-bottle analogy! And I will spend the next six months coming up with a Retrospector-style DJ name – the ones I’ve come up so far aren’t fit for public consumption.
May 21, 2012 at 9:16+00:00May
Nigel Featherstone
Hi Gabe, so glad you liked it.
I reckon one of the best things about blogging is how the technology sometimes allows you to do things really fast, and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. In this case, it seems to have worked.
PS I added the single quotation marks before publishing; perhaps they should have been doubles to make it doubly clear that I didn’t write the words!