periodic blahs

Periodically, I get the blahs with my creative self.

I have two hobbies.

Both take a lot of time and effort to do well.

Cycling can be very all consuming. There is always another hill to climb, trail to ride, kilometre to pedal. It never ends. Bicycles are to me a wonderful machine which just makes me happy. It may sound silly to some, but I am always happy if I am in a room with a bicycle.

I think it is because of the good memories that the bicycle engenders for me. As a child, it represented freedom. Freedom from walking everywhere. Freedom from the local. I could go so much farther, and so much faster. It was pure fun. As I got older and entered my teen years, the bicycle became a way to get around and my horizons really broadened. It came to represent some of the best times I had with my father as a teen. I loved (loved!!) our rides together. It also set me apart from my peers. I am not a joiner. I like to be different. Almost no one I knew understood why the word Campagnolo made me smile with a fierce inner delight. No one got it. And I liked it that way. It meant that I was not normal.

And I liked it that way.

As an adult, the bicycle became something to play with even more. I took a foolish break from riding during my university years and fell hard for cars. Dumb. Later, I got back into riding via mountain bikes and spent years racking up kilometres in the dirt, scars on my body, and smiles on my face. I loved it.

Still do.

Now, a bicycle is both a toy - road riding to see what is over the hill still makes me smile, and a week is ruined if it does not involve both dirt and a bicycle - and a mode of transport. It is freedom again. Freedom from traffic, from stress, from soul crushing driving.

I can never ride enough.

However, it is not my only hobby.

I also like taking pictures of things. I like it a lot. It can be very meditative. The creative process - using a chunk of metal, plastic, glass, and electronics to create a thing of beauty is something which has a great deal of appeal to me. I like to create.

I have it in my head to someday take a picture which is a piece of actual art.

I am one of those who believes that photography can be art. It CAN be art. Not every photograph is art. Not by a long shot. But a photograph can be art.

What makes it so?

If a picture moves you. If it makes you stop, look, and gasp. If it tells a real story. If it makes you look again and again.

Then it is art. Or, at least, it nears it.

I want to create art someday.

I don't feel as if I have taken my picture yet. Some of what I have done comes close, but I have not taken that picture which makes me look at it and say yes, now I have taken The Picture.

Today, the inspiration well is dry. It feels as if there is nothing there. Most of what I am doing now is just documentary picture taking. It is of no import. Boring. Dull.

In part, this is because I have taken just about all the useful pictures that I can take locally. In part, this is because I just have a case of the photographic blahs and know that it will pass. In part, it is because I feel as if I cannot ever take The Picture.

Of course that is silly because there is no such thing as The Picture and the seeking of it is a quest with no end.

In that, photography is like cycling. A quest with no end.