Category: REPORTS
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Reportings
It hit me the other day. Not like a ton of bricks but like a big bag of leaves and it exploded.
While Hamburger Eyes is about the outward journey, Ray’s Reports is about the inward journey.
I only bring it up because at the book fair last week people were asking. I usually just say, “It’s my personal blog.” Which it is, but I been thinking about what I’m doing here and why I am writing about what I’m writing about.
More thinking out loud. Thanks for listening.
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Preferences
This is Michelle. She loves McDonald’s and Sonic the Hedgehog and I’m guessing she made that tshirt. She’s very talented.
Feeling extra wordy these days, been gone too long.
I could’ve been blogging from my phone the whole time. The laptop is not necessary for updating this website, yet I prefer it.
Did I just flop into philosphical nugget on accident? Is life a continuum of desires, separations, and preferences?
I knew I wanted to write about minimizing my crap today. I’m moving. Again.
But I didn’t realize the role of preference in all this.
Everything around you is around you because of preference.
Throwing away something that has zero preference in your life will leave zero feeling of separation.
And vice versa, getting rid of something that has major preference in your life will cause a major feeling of separation. You can anticipate that sepration which is why it’s hard to get rid of.
I guess its my version of Marie Kondo. She will ask if an object brings her joy or not. I am asking if an object has more or less preference than another object assigned to the same duty. LOL.
On another level though, we can say our desires are driven by levels of preference with levels of separation.
In other words, your preference in options combined with the depth and angle of separation will reshape and sharpen what you want.
This really looks like a discussion synonymous with seeking pleasure and avoiding pain and how our decisions are heavily influenced by these factors. Turns out I am not dropping any new philosophy bombs.
Ok then. I can type on my laptop and I can type on my phone, I can do the job of writing on both. The phone wins in portability. The laptop wins because of the keyboard. It’s a tie, so neither is going in the trash today.
(Writing this on my phone now, k thanks bye.)
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Seedings
In the documentary I said something totally dumb along the lines of, “Your photos are your seeds.”
They had asked about my favorite photos that I had shot and I was trying to swerve the question by saying they are all my favorites, like they are my children or something. Embarrassing metaphor that now lives on the internet forever.
In my defense it was probably 8am and I was crazy nervous and there was no prep questions or any time to sort my thoughts.
I’m thinking of this now because a quote popped up recently.
“Don’t judge the day on the harvest, but on the seeds you planted.”
I don’t know who said it or remember where I heard it. Too lazy to look it up.
Ok, just looked it up. Robert Louis Stevenson.
Trying to see if my seeds, our seeds, are our photos or something else? In today’s world, wouldn’t just content in general be the seeds?
A zine, a book, a podcast episode, a video, a blog post?
No, I think the photo IS the seed and then it sprouts into one of those other things.
We may not know what species the seed is until later, sometimes years later.
I’m just thinking out loud here.
What I do know is that if I’m not getting my seeds right, I feel weird.
I don’t shoot or make stuff every day but I am learning lately that I feel better when I do.
BUT, on the other side of the coin, I have gathered some of the most exotic seeds and planted them in the most beautiful soil and sunlight. Watered them with magic water from Merlin himself and yet no fruit was harvested.
I think this is point though. The fun part is the seeds. The harvest, schmarvest.
I went to Paris once with my brother and our friend Monkey. We met a French girl and had a picnic with her.
First we went for some groceries. We learned about wine and cheese and sausage. “Saucisse” means sausage and “saucisson” means dry sausage. Like a salami.
We posted up by a river. “Saucisson c’est la vie,” she said.
I asked her to explain and she continued, “Food is life, wine is life..”
In memory it was way more epic sounding in her accent and she was very attractive. She didn’t say it but I felt more, “Sharing is life, hanging out is life. Today is life.”
“Saucisson c’est la vie,” stuck with us for a while. I still say it sometimes.
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Integration
This is Blake. He turned a small room into a fully loaded darkroom. Haven’t seen this nice of a setup in a while and it’s in an apartment!
I been thinking how, if ever, would all this esoteric stuff I been researching and studying creep it’s way into my photography. I mostly just shoot like I’m recording an auto biography and there’s usually nothing mystical about my daily life.
But I do come up with weird movie ideas. One story is about the concept that we came to Earth in order to experience the full range of emotions. In order to do that, we chose to be born with amensia. That is because if we knew everything at birth, that would contradict our life experience.
This would be a romantic comedy starring Adam Sandler. He would be born with full memory and he spends the entire movie trying to give himself amnesia without killing himself or getting permanent brain damage.
The title is, “I Thought Earth Would Be Different.”
I didn’t write a script but I liked the title so I used it for my new zine with Innen Books, get it here.
And then one night with a friend we were trying to come up with some cool shaman names. I came up with, “Infinite Brown Eagle.”
I ended up using that for the title of my new book. It was planned to be a series of 5 zines, but then I thought it would be a cooler as a book. It worked out to be 250 pages and will be out next week.
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More Notes
This is Laura. She’s 6ft tall and makes me feel like I’m that tall when cruising with her.
I made it back to LA and after a couple days I’m ready to get through mountains of emails and bills.
More notes on travelling.
Anytime you leave the apartment in SF or NY, lets say to meet a friend for coffee, somehow it’s $40.
I brought only a 28mm lense. Normally, it’s all I need but now I think I need a 40mm. I’d do the 40 or even 50 on the body and use my phone as the 28.
I used both my phone and Lumix equally but it’s redundant when both are the same angle of view.
As for work stuff, even though I can sorta “work” from my phone, it doesn’t mean its easier.
On the rainy days or days that I had time to myself where I should be trying to work, I really just wanted to read or catch up on Youtube.
My laptop is like 200 lbs and it has to be plugged in the whole time. It’s cumbersome and I should’ve left it at home.
I’m thinking a $200 Chromebook next time for travelling.
Great blog post, I know.
Also, I had multiple Instagram spazz out episodes. Like 3 of them that I talked myself out of, and then all of a sudden yesterday I deleted all my photos.
I figured out what my problem is. I have always printed my photos first. Either in print form or zine form or book form.
The LA book fair is coming up, so while I’m thinking about making either a new zine series or 1 book from all the photos I been shooting, I’m posting all the photos on Instagram.
Doesn’t seem like that big of a deal at first, but when you start the layout, even just in your head, the photos are now a little deflated since all your people already saw them on the internet.
Even if the photos aren’t really deflated, you are deflated like there’s no wind beneath your photoshop wings anymore.
Overthinking it, for sure. But I think I will reserve IG for photos already published, or for news of new publishings.
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Notes
This is Martin. He is awesome and brought the “get da fuck outta hea” anti-cornball vibes to our NY movie screening. Not that there were any cornballs there, but I haven’t felt that old school vibe in a while. We smoked a joint. And I don’t smoke so that’s how fun he is.
I’m almost back to LA, it’s been around 4 weeks from SF to NY and back to SF. Here are some notes.
Haven’t shot as much as I like. But that’s normal. I made my IG account into all portraits, so I find myself mostly looking for portraits which is fine. I wish I brought another lense or 2.
I’m getting old. Can’t stay out all night any more. Trying though. Also, it is hard to eat healthy on a tight travel budget.
It’s cool to meet all these photographers through Hamburger Eyes. I get down on myself sometimes, but this means I am doing my job correctly. These guys keep it going. “Wanna quit but can’t,” an Amart quote that comes to mind.
Lots of homies in transition. Is it something in the stars?
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Gone Fishing
In SF now and then NY next week for the Hamburger Eyes screenings and book release, hopefully I’ll come back with some cool photos. See you out there.
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Resonance
My friend and I were talking about if she should go to see her friend’s band play tonight or if she should stay home, which is what she kinda wants to do.
A pros and cons list started developing and I couldn’t help but get into all these things I have been reading about and sharing here. The truth isn’t about why or why not, it’s about resonance.
When it comes to choices one option will almost always resonate more than the other so if she really wants to stay home and watch movies, then she probably should. She said the idea of seeing friends is resonating but not the actual show, I said she could see the homies the next day for coffee or whatever.
You might say this doesn’t apply to everything. For instance, eating a bag of Doritos for dinner versus actually cooking something. The bag of chips could be resonating very high but there is another voice saying, “Don’t be lazy..”
These voices, opinions, and commentary in your head are your conscious mind, sub conscious mind, and super conscious mind. I don’t know if this is right, but I equate your conscious mind with your head and ego, your sub conscious mind with your physical body, and your super conscious mind is your intuition which is galactic and multi dimensional in nature. That is for another post one day.
When we practice listening enough we can decipher where exactly these messages are coming from. Maybe you want to stay home because this particular bar is more draining then fulfilling, or maybe you shouldn’t eat that because your body is inflamed and your just 1 Dorito away from permanent damage.
These messages can come in loudly or quietly. So when a decision with options comes up, just sit and wait for the correct answer to start resonating. The idea is simple, but execution not always easy. I know.
