Nee!

This weekend I bought a digital camera. It's bizarrely strange how such a purchase can completely alter your world-view. No matter where I go now, I find myself constantly casing the joint for good pics and twirling my handlebar moustache. I wonder, will I ever be normal again?

It's strange though how cameras give you a whole new view of the world. I have not quite decided if I find it healthy or slightly unhealthy for me to be constantly seeing things through the lens of a camera. So many folks I know take rocking good pictures with their digital cams--yeah and oh yeah. I've watched them whip those tiny things out and start snapping away left and right, mercilessly stripping the world of image after fantastic image. I don't know if it's just me, but I have a hard time doing this. It seems to interrupt the moment when I'm constantly whipping it out and taking pictures. You know what I'm saying? But I wanna. But what does this mean?

When I start getting panicky about this, and nauseatingly philosophical, I find myself thinking back to a quote from The Blair Witch Project:

"It's not the same on film is it? I mean,
you know it's real, but it's like looking
through the lens gives you some sort of
protection from what's on the other side."

And it is. And it does. And I can't decide whether I want to embrace this distance and detachment or not. And I can't decide if I want the camera to become my third eye or not, if I want to constantly be looking at everything as picture-taking opportunities, if I want to view the world in this new and different way. Sometimes I just want to experience it as an experience, rather than as a series of picture-taking opportunities. I keep thinking of myself turning into Tetsuo the Iron Man as I'm swallowed up by technology. But then I see the fantastic photos that folks take, and I shout internally to myself, "To hell with that! I want me some perty pictures!"





I mean, already I've started looking at things differently everywhere I go--would this make a good pic? Oh, if only the sky were a bit lighter, that would be lovely! Etc. etc. This is a bit mortifying to me. I am torn between wanting to live a normal, camera-free life where I can walk down the street and just walk down the street, instead of constantly finding myself constantly admiring the symmetry of sewer grates or the steely gray of the sky and how that would look ever so nice framed and on my wall.

I also suffer from performance issues--I've found myself unsure of whether or not I suck at taking pictures or my camera does. I am hoping that it is neither and that, once I get to downloading these pics onto my computer, I'll see that they look much better when not on the goddamn thumbnail screen. And I'm hoping that it's just a matter of time and practice until I master how the fuck to work this damn thing. But I still have performance anxiety. Mostly just because I'm having a hard time trying to figure out how to work this thing. Shutter speed? Aperture? Fellatio? I've been reading up on these things, but they still confuse the piss out of me. And my damn apartment is so haunted-housingly dark that every picture I take is either punched in the face by the glaring glow of the flash or completely awash in darkness.

So musings of the day: Camera=detachment from reality? How do I take better pictures? Will my life ever be the same? Why did I dream about a Monty Python card-game the other night where when you completed a hand you had to shout Nee?

This blog entry is mildly incoherent, but I blame Burger King's yummy but jitter-inducing coffee for that, as well as the fact that I cannot get that damn Fiddler on the Roof song out of my head today. If I were a rich man, Ya ha deedle deedle, bubba bubba deedle deedle dum. (Those are the actual lyrics--I swear to god. I looked them up.) Thank god that, even when OCDed with picture-taking, my brain always leaves room for randomness.

Purple monkey toothbrush.

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