Life Before Death

Through a friend's link, I encountered this site. Anyone looking at it would have their own personal experience. The subject matter is intense.

This sombre series of portraits taken of people before and after they had died is a challenging and poignant study. The work by German photographer Walter Schels and his partner Beate Lakotta, who recorded interviews with the subjects in their final days, reveals much about dying - and living.

Something is missing

These days blogging feels different. I'm not sure why. I love doing it every day, but something is missing and I don't quite know what it is.

Maybe I am feeling emptiness, after having been so intensely woven into The Dream House and Veronica's House. They had (have) a distinct purpose to them.

As much as I love blogging and don't consciously feel like stopping, it is beginning to feel 'dead'. Why am I blogging daily? What is its importance? What purpose does it serve? Who cares? If I stopped, what would change?

In a way, it's as if the blog is a little extension of me: a daily cyber canvas of general thoughts, feelings, ideas, projects ... life in a cyber nutshell, so to speak. So then ... if I took what I just wrote and replaced the word 'blogging' with 'living', what would that say?

These days living feels different. I'm not sure why. I love doing it every day, but something is missing and I don't quite know what it is ...

Still getting with it

Another learning curve may be on its way ...

This morning I turned on my keyboard (which I bought in 1998) to finish up a scoring job due tomorrow. Thank goodness I had already composed the theme song (the most important part) and sent it to their editor ... so he has that. Because when I turned on the keyboard this morning, the LCD screen just glowed orange and had no information on it. The battery is dying ...

Perhaps it is already dead. I can't do anything with that keyboard today.

I will see tomorrow if I can get a new battery somewhere. I hope so!

So far in the past two - three months, my 3 year old video camera conked out (upgraded to a new one), my cellular phone (got a new one) and now keyboard. Something is telling me that:
(i) it's time to shift gears with the music, upgrade and start using different applications
(ii) I also need to examine the non-technological aspects of life and see what old, habitual or comfort-zonish things need to be changed and replaced by the new

Brief explanation of removal

I decided to remove the post I wrote earlier, commenting on the comments on this post. Not because anything was wrong with the post, but because I'm fed up of hearing about the E word and the P word (elections and politics) and in that split second I didn't even feel like having them on today's page of my blog.

When I thought about it, even though the comments were a good example of different 'vibrations', I prefer not to bring politics into my explanation of what I meant by 'changing the vibration'.

10 useful tips

1. Change the vibration
2. Change the vibration
3. Change the vibration
4. Change the vibration
5. Change the vibration
6. Change the vibration
7. Change the vibration
8. Change the vibration
9. Change the vibration
10. Change the vibration

I want ...

Some time ago a friend of mine was feeling in the doldrums due to routine, lack of inspiration, etc etc etc ... and in our conversation I suggested to her that she write five things each morning that she REALLY wants to do that day, no matter how 'impossible' they may seem (e.g. fly to Italy for a pasta lunch). Initially she told me it was hard to do, but then she got into it.

Yesterday I decided to try it too ... by writing just two things I really wanted to do. It felt difficult to think of even two things! There was a time when this would have been easy for me, especially as my wants are simple. It horrified me to think that I couldn't think of any wants. It made me feel that I have slipped too far into the daily routine of 'things I have to do'. Are the wants now shoved aside and invisible?

My two wants ended up being:
1. Go for a long, unplanned drive/an adventure with someone whose company I really enjoy (and vice versa)
2. Be in a cinematography/directors workshop with interesting people in a place I like (I put Toronto as a definite choice, but when I thought more about it I felt that it could also be somewhere else, once I enjoyed being in the place - but TO is the first one I feel, so I left it as that)

Want #1 appeals to my desire to do nothing and just be spontaneous, having no thoughts of anything that 'has' to be done. Emptiness waiting to be filled by fun and interesting things.

Want #2 is practical. It appeals to my desire to enjoy learning something I am interested in and which applies to my professional life, with the added benefit of being in a place which stimulates me on different levels.

A want can be simple or complex. It can be deep or on the surface. I may be conscious of it immediately or maybe it might take a long while for me to really unearth what I want.

I want to explore 'want' more deeply.
What I 'want' (as opposed to what I 'need' or 'have to do').
Then I want to get what I want.