Hi, I'm Hans! Find me at hello@digitalwoodsman.se or as @pikkabird on Twitter.
Energise or scrap it
reflect on all the thoughts about making the right choices. All the time spent reasoning about rights and wrongs in an endless stream of questions. Now I'm not sure it's ever about getting anywhere. I'm not sure you can get anywhere. Still we keep looking for inspiration and guides. Teachers and masters. Road signs to get us off the beaten path. Creation of anything that matter. Creations that get us back to the current moment and anchors the past and the unknown in a meaningful now. I think photography can do that for us, but I believe that the written word helps make the photograph more meaningful. Josh White makes his beautiful images come to life with a personal and nuanced commentary.
Why photography then? It's a fast way to convey a feeling with or without a documentary content. I'm drawn to the high contrast black and white images that have an emotional content more so than colourful eye candy.
Where do I see this will get me and what will it do for other people and our world? Maybe nothing at all. And that's fine I tell myself. But I'm not too honest then. I do naively think I can do a difference. People say that they create just for themselves and if what they do helps just one other person that's enough. I'm not too sure about that. Of course you want to be valuable to other people. But I suppose there are many ways to make a difference in other people's lives.
I feel it's important to get a clear view of your own life before you can make the most for someone else. There comes the importance of reducing and simplifying. Invisible clutter and silent todo lists are hard to get a handle on but I believe it's of greatest relevance to tackle that before anything else. Freedom will not come from total control but instead from attempting to control as little as possible. That's not implying a laisser faire attitude but instead keeping unwanted things in your life to a minimum. And what's unwanted can't be discovered in a cluttered mess. Ask yourself what you want in your life instead of what you want to take away. Visualise your ideal day or visualise the world you want to see in a hundred years. That's a world without you, but try and picture yourself living in that world.
Make your life ultra light in all ways possible and necessary. Make your mind ultra light as well. Weigh your words and you will develop a powerful language that can empower others; inspiration from George Monbiot, Forget ‘the environment’: we need new words to convey life’s wonders.
Energise all things you want in your life. Let everything else go to where it can energise others. Else scrap or recycle it.
(On a train between Gävle and Falun.)