society – FocalHeart

I write to detangle my thoughts, so that I don’t tie myself in knots. If I can enjoy the process, then that will be a bonus.

I have been diving deep into WordPress, to catchup on the latest tools available to build websites from scratch, only to come back full circle and realise that despite all the modern advancements and new trends, I always go back to the Twenty Fifteen theme.

After spending hours, quite late into the night tweaking and experimenting with blocks and Gutenberg, I realised that what I was really trying to do, unconsciouly, was to recreate the Twenty Fifteen theme. So I downloaded it, disabled Gutenberg and saved my self a lot of headaches.

I also went down the rabbit hole of the Wayback Machine of the Internet Archive, where I unearthed my first, self-hosted blog. I used to write in it between 2002 and 2010. It felt like my younger self appearing in front of my very eyes and staring back at me fiercely.

Continue reading The Wayback…

I read this post yesterday. It is a very well written account from a photographer called Sammie. She takes her analog camera everywhere to tune into the world around her and document what she sees. In this specific post, she is taking street shots, revealing what lies beneath the veneer of central London. I really enjoyed the combination of her social commentaries alongside her photographs.

Reading her made me reflect on my younger self, roaming around London, like a piece of flotsam. I observed first hand how much a big living organism such as London needs to consume. I’m not talking about the Londoners buying too much junk here – although that’s also true as seen on Sammie’s photographs – I’m talking about how much big capital cities such as London consume people – also as seen in her photographs – feeding off their life force. The vast majority of people are just surviving there. They are paid just enough to be able to live on – or under – the poverty line, but they can never quite manage to thrive, or get out of debt.

I strolled into London as a 20 something young person, my heart and my eyes wide open, ready to embrace all of the Big Smoke’s offerings…. I was listening to the Clash in loop, while floating around London on my own, taking it all in, from Camden town, to Notting Hill…

Continue reading Slowing down, unravelling…