I returned to my home in the UK, with its “everyday” life of materialism and disappointment. The writer Paul Theroux once said that the hardest part of travelling was having these extreme, wonderful experiences in the real world and then coming home and seeing how people go about very mundane lives, in their constructed realities. I saw this in my home town, and it was hard to accept.
My mother was also battling with life-changing things, battling with her pain, and with herself. She recovered from her operation, and we walked together on the beach. One week in Cornwall, I walked into the sunset. Joy Wants Eternity is one of the most important photographs to me of all the photography I have ever made (cover photograph). Against the rose tint of the sunset, a figure stands in the white sand in a dream-like pose. That figure is my mother. I will always have this photograph as a memory of my mother and the love I have for her.
When looking at this image I am always reminded of my favourite song - Uriel, by the band Joy Wants Eternity. The name of the band came from a quote from Friedrich Nietzcsche - Joy Wants Eternity. After reading this several times I re-worked the poem itself. It goes, in my mind:
“Memories of Joy that wants eternity,
Joy, deeper still than any agony,
For years I slept my sleep,
And now awake at dreaming's end:
I see the world is deep,
And deeper than the mind can comprehend.”
This joy is forever in my mind when exploring the memories evoked by revisiting my old photograph. The sunlight on Carbis bay, as we walked for hours along the trail by the sea.
At home once again, one of the first things I did was to go to Exeter. I discovered a beautiful walk several years ago, a light hike along the river for about an hour, and then the traveller arrives at a pub along the canal. In springtime, there are swans gliding along. This is the most peaceful place I know. Sitting on the deck here and reading is a calming experience of inner peace. Wherever I go, I do photography, so I tried to represent this place, where all my travelling started. As T.S. Eliot once wrote, “We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” So, this is my memory of the place I call home.
But I could not sit still. I went to Brighton to attend a concert, but was disappointed by the tackiness and materialism of modern Britain in its rawest form. Still, one of my most beautiful memories is a photograph of the Brighton Pavillion, an oriental Asian design of a palace, in the heart of a run-down seaside resort in the UK, like the proverbial American city, where a rose grows from the concrete and gives rise to a heartfelt rap song of anger and broken dreams.
Night drapes over me like Shakespeare's blanket in the dark, the chill of the winter wind numb in my bones. This too is a waste land, Eliot sings in me, "I could not speak, and my eyes failed". I gaze at the moonlight that falls softly on the beach, illuminated by the paleness of the night, we are near the ocean and I can hear a hissing in the distance, the splashing of the frothy waves, polluted with seaweed, sloppy, dirty, cold.
As I look out of my hotel window across the night, into the vast expanse of the moonlit beach, the sand stretches for miles, the hiss of the waves beckons me and Matthew Arnold's words weigh on me like this iron ocean of the night, "come to the window, sweet is the night-air! Only, from the long line of spray where the sea meets the moon-blanched land, Listen! you hear the grating roar of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling" and I am interrupted by a shudder of my body in the freezing Brighton cold.
From here, I returned, and strolled along the beach on one fine day, attempting to see the world anew.
The journey took me to Wales, the ancient land of green valleys, at the beginning of the climb up to the mountain of Pen-y-Fan. The main title of my photograph is taken from the poem by the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, “Rage Against the Dying of the Light”. I wanted my mother to fight against her illness, and seize the day. To rage against the end with the fire of former days.
In Pontnedfecchan, Wales, is a portrait of my mother under a waterfall. It is important to retain the memories of the person I love, who has unconditionally supported me all my life.
The green valleys of Wales are shown from the top of Pen-y-Fan at the end of the climb. The title is called “Set Free (Hiraeth)”. At this time I was set free from something that was troubling me deeply. Hiraeth is a word in traditional Welsh. It has no translation in any other language. It is a kind of nostalgic state, a kind of yearning for the homeland of Wales. It is shown here in these beautiful green valleys. In a way, I was home.
Climbing the open valley plains, I came across two figures exposed against the elements. The gathering of the clouds above formed a vast, deep darkness against the skies.
Take shelter. There is a storm coming.
But a drowning man does not fear the rain, according to an ancient Persian proverb.
The skies opened up with rain, thunder blowing up the horizon. It rained down hard on the world. It was dark and wet here, in the rain. The storm raged itself out to nothingness, like the storm within my mind.
“If there’s a storm, let it rage. It will resolve into calm. The goal is not to love the sunny days and hate the storm. It is to understand that all weather is process.”
The words from a song by Caspian rang out in my mind, Castles High, Marble Bright.
Driving back in the storm, protected by the warmth of the car, while the world all around fell with a blizzard of English rain, I was once again at home.
On a night by the river at home, I saw the reflection of a darkened dream.
From here, my travels took me to Hartland Quay, on the North Devon coastline. The protruding rocks are like jagged knives from another planet. A wild, beautiful, place.
I walked the path from Hartland all the way to Clovelly on the coast. A long way to walk; I was not expecting to. You see, I just had to get away and be alone. I had to see the reality of this island for myself. I had no map; in fact I had nothing. I just followed the coast. I got lost several times, and darkness fell. I ventured inland by mistake. I got lost again in the woods at night. But like any person of the world, I listened to the sounds of the ocean. Eventually I found my way back to the coast and followed the journey along the coast-line, seeing only by the light of the moon.
I was the only person on the coast that day. Rain fell into the mud. I looked for footprints in the mud, to show who had travelled there that day - there were none. It was pure solitude.
When I reached the village of Clovelly, I found a public house and almost collapsed. I ate heartily, and was able to represent the things I had seen in photography. The rest was somewhere else.
Later I emerged into a small and dilapidated seaside town, languidly brushing aside the ether of sleep, Woolacombe, this little town is called, though in truth it could be anywhere, out on the outskirts of the choppy Devon coast, windy, grey and open. In the distance I can hear the splash of the frothy sea, where the coarse dullness of sand stretches for miles. The town is empty, several solitary roads wind around an incline to the north and I walk towards the slope.
To my left, immediately in front is a large pub, "The Red Barn" it says and inside there is noise and bustle, mostly locals, drunk, pulsating, lit from the distance giving light to the muted grey, but I walked further upwards, past a disused hot dog stand. It s dilapidated, the metal flaking off, words scrawled on the side, memories of when I would come here when I was eighteen years old to party with my friends in the local nightclub. There is nothing here for me any more.
The cold air is still and the wind is gusty. I see a woman walk past and stand at the bus stand, huddling into herself for warmth. Her nose is numb, glowing pink, cheeks flushed, and she breathes out more mist. Everything is cold here in winter, and I must return home before nightfall.
In sunnier climes, on the beach of Durdle Door in Dorset, is a series of landscape photographs, taken from the top of the panorama, looking down across the view.
The Jurassic coast here in Dorset, UK, in these expansive shots shows the chalky, white cliffs and in one photograph each individual silhouette, leaving one to wonder at the lives of all of the figures and the scale of each in the vastness of nature.
I will become the ground you walk on. I knew this always. Taken from the air, two people walk alone, never understanding each other at all. The title is a reference to a track by the composer Valgeir Sigurðsson.
And even a rolling stone gathers moss, as my work here shows.
At Lynton, in Devon, I created an impressionistic artwork, based on the sea. It is influenced by Turner, and more contemporary artwork. It was made after an exhilarating, wild, blustery walk along the cliffs at the edge of the world.
Yet somehow I felt that beyond the dreary dullness of my home town, and the wild blustery beauty of the coast around the UK, there was something more to be found. When I was young, I would read novels of the traditional England, with its green lawns and grand country houses, lives spent sipping tea and scones, the quaint, green village lawns, secrets hidden under the creaking floorboards of large country manors, a world that has long since disappeared. Je suis d’alleurs, I thought, I am from elsewhere.
My next plan was to spend a few days in Cambridge. And here I found the beauty that eludes so much of the United Kingdom. I spent a morning in London, staying in one of my favourite cafes, the Coffeeworks Project. Here I had the entire garden to myself, with some of the best coffee in London. This place was so wonderful that I almost decided to cancel it all and stay there forever, just sitting in the sunlit garden and reading books. But I headed out on the train, ready for a new adventure.
In Cambridge, with its old meandering alleys and grand university colleges, I saw the Bridge of Sighs and the boats floating idly by. But the explorer in me knew that I could not sit still. So, I followed the river, wherever it would take me. On my way, while walking, the titles for my photography came to me, like song titles from an imaginary album, playing in my head.
1. Cambridge Sunset
2. The Bridge of Sighs
3. Seed Bellow’s Lyric (For an England that Disappeared)
4. Two Swans
5. Grantchester Meadow
6. Perfect Day (featuring Lou Reed)
7. Les Fruits de la Terre
8. Great Expectations
9. Stars of May
10. Take me to the river down below
11. Daydream Among the Flowers
12. Sunset Gangstaz (featuring Rhymebeard)
13. Song of the Light
But there was no photography. It was all in my mind. Three hours later, I emerged from my reverie. I looked up at the blazing sun, purple-eyed, beard itching, ravaged by hay fever. I looked down at my camera, and there were 100 photographs, like memories belonging to another man. Seed Bellow. Was he real? I was in the middle of nowhere, but I found a pub, and sat down. The chef was kind enough to give me some of his Cetirizine tablets, and my head swam back to shore. I ordered a steak, which I devoured hungrily. By this time as darkness was about to fall, I found my way back to the river, and I followed it back home.
On my way back, I came across what I consider to be one of my best portrait photographs. A flame-haired young man was sitting under a tree, reading. This scene finally reminded me of the idyllic England in the literature that I had read when I was growing up. These green lawns of Grantchester Meadow and the Bloomsbury set of writers in the pre-war period, discussing intellectual matters over scones and tea on the green cricket lawns of old England. This world has long since disappeared. The photograph was a kind of requiem for an idyllic world.
I stayed up late soon after, and it was then that I had resumed writing again. I wrote a poem for the first time in years, as it came to me in the course of around 15 minutes, influenced by William Blake, as I thought of a white swan I had seen.
“The white in the black, the black in the white,
The light in my darkness, the darkness in my light.
I dream awake, I awake in dreams,
This universe is not quite what it seems,
Please don’t be afraid of me,
It takes a lifetime to perceive reality;
May your mind be like the swan,
May your light and darkness be as one,
For everything is energy,
Balancing itself, may our minds be free.”
This is an accompaniment to one of my black and white photographs of this time. I had to keep writing, I had to express my knowledge of the beauty of this world, to give my dream a shape. No matter how hard, against all the obstacles, I would keep writing from this point on.
And suddenly a quote by Rumi came to me:
You have to keep breaking your heart until it opens.
I visited Manchester in the rain, where night photography was a great way to hone my photography skills for later years travelling to far away places of this beautiful world.
Manchester contained a fantastic art gallery where I came away with new photography. The memory remains, of the brown mills, exploring along the canals among the falling autumn leaves.
Then it rained. It rained vigorously. But some memories will stay with me always - the colours of light illuminating silhouettes walking in the night, my memories like broken reflections of passers by in the puddles of rain.
As the rain fell hard, so did my hope. Hard down into the ground below. And then I understood what Vladimir Nabokov wrote:
“Do not be angry with the rain; it simply does not know how to fall upwards.”
I could not be angry, I had come to accept the country I lived in without anger. Yet I had to find a way to develop myself, so that I would live with peace, balance and harmony, like I had learned in the zen temples of Japan, or the ancient ruins of Cambodia.
I travelled to Edinburgh. I still believe that it is one of the most beautiful cities in the world. I spent a lot of time in Edinburgh, where I developed my photography in the early days. It is a wonderful place to be a flâneur, exploring the streets of the old town, which in itself is a UNESCO protected world heritage site. I have spent many hours in the hip coffee shops here, living in a relaxed way, which I loved doing in any new city.
However, Edinburgh is truly beautiful. Within the city itself is Holyrood Park, a tall peak of the Scottish highlands. Climbing up to the top one comes to Arthur’s Seat, and a powerful and stunning view awaits.
Quite simply, to be there was invigorating. The clear, fresh air of a cold, sunlit day was probably the freshest, most exhilarating air I have ever breathed into my lungs.
The main image of my photography series from Edinburgh is a vertical shot of three silhouettes against the enormous dark blue skies - this is the largest view of the sky I have ever made, with the clouds swirling enormously above the silhouettes. I thought at the time that this was the best thing I had ever done. But it was done in the very early days, before any fame or recognition as a photographer awaited. All I ever wanted was for people to see my photography work and to appreciate it, to know something about the world, and to feel something unique. But I still feel that this series has never really been seen. I hope it will be, because I feel that it has a lot to offer.
And the darkness of the night in Edinburgh is also reflected in the series - in the image titled “Nightcrawler”, a starkly lit black and white scene sees an old man emerging from the night. This was photography from the edge of the journey of night.
Yet as night turned to day once again, and the morning took me away, I would stroll along The Meadows, deep in Edinburgh's green heart, among the verdant bloom of a beautiful memory, and I would know peace once more.
Capturing the silhouettes passing by among the frames of nature, from the beginning, through photography I would give expression to my dreams.
There is a further photograph of three young men in a late night diner, looking frozen in the distance. I strongly felt that there was a real influence of Edward Hopper and Saul Leiter in my photograph and that it deserved to be seen. It is included in this book for this, even though it is certainly not among my best work.
One more photograph from Edinburgh is a nostalgic one. I came across a beautiful girl under a tree playing the song "Ederlezi". My heart stopped for about 5 minutes. To this day, this song, as performed by Goran Bregovic and in the film The Time Of The Gypsies, has the power to cut through me to the bone. It is a song from my childhood. And then to see this unexpectedly one day in Edinburgh, I was completely torn apart by the agonizing beauty. It is not one of my best pieces of photography, but it captured a beautiful moment in time. I was so shaken by this young girl playing the song I had known as a child, with a smile on her face, that it was simply too much for me emotionally. It is hard to describe this experience in words. I had to leave. It was many years ago now, and I do not know why I hold on to such memories of fragmented scenes playing themselves out before my eyes, the detail behind the everyday world.
I had seen enough of the UK, enough of my home. It was sometimes beautiful, and sometimes wild, yet I felt it to be nearly always blunted by the practical dullness of the lowest common denominator. To see beyond, to see art and luminous beauty among the mundanity, required a radical energy that wrestled one away from peaceful awareness.
But no matter how much of a driven yearning I felt for adventure beyond the edge of the known world, I knew that there was a dream, and that the dreaming gave birth to a beautiful pain.
Yet no matter how hard the edges of life, when I returned home, and I considered a passage by Albert Camus, I knew that I had felt peace.
“In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer. And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there's something stronger – something better, pushing right back.”
Read on for the next chapter - Changing the World - bringing together everything that has been experienced on the journey and asking the question - "How can we change the world?". Read on via the home page......