shogun

Posted on May 6, 2024 by greg

I recently finished watching the new Shogun mini-series, and yes, I have thoughts. Before I inflict those thoughts on you, I should report that I’ve read the novel twice. I don’t recall when I first read it, but it was many years ago; I reread it earlier this year when I heard about the remake of the mini-series. I should also say I’ve seen the original Shogun mini-series starring Richard Chamberlain and Toshiro Mifune. So I can compare the new version to the old version and to the novel itself.

Shogun 2024 is both better and worse than Shogun 1980. Visually, it’s significantly better. The cinematography is spectacular. It’s certainly darker (literally), but the biggest difference is the story world of Shogun 2024 looks and feels lived in, if that makes sense. The story world in Shogun 1980 looked and felt like elaborate movie sets. The production values of Shogun 1980 are a product of their time, and it shows. There’s a convincing verisimilitude in the new version that was absent in the original.

The narrative in the new version is, in some ways, easier to follow–which ought to be a good thing, but isn’t always. I’d heard it would emphasize the Japanese perspective over that of the European protagonist. I confess, I was of two minds about this. I mean, the story takes place in early 17th Japan, so yeah, obviously it should be sensitive to the existing culture. But at the same time, it’s a classic ‘stranger in a strange land’ tale. At its heart, it’s a story about a person trying to understand and survive a society that’s exceedingly different from his own.

In Shogun 2024, the Japanese dialog includes subtitles. This, obviously, allows the viewer to understand what’s being said. Shogun 1980 did NOT provide subtitles, which had a HUGE impact on the story and the viewing experience. The viewer was as confused and uncertain about what was happening as Blackthorne. Unless you spoke Japanese, you were at the mercy of Mariko’s translation–or you were forced to try to deduce what was being said based on the behavior of the characters. This reinforced Blackthorne’s sense of isolation. The absence of subtitles also required the actors to rely more on face and body acting; they had to use body language and facial reactions to physically demonstrate what was taking place and being said.

This leads me to my main criticism of Shogun 2024, which is the way Toranaga is depicted. In the novel and in Shogun 1980, Toranaga clearly enjoys being alive. He displays a wide range of emotions; he’s exuberant, he’s stern, he drinks, he’s sentimental, he laughs, he gets angry, he’s wise, he’s deeply curious, he’s willing to be silly, he’s deadly serious, he’s stubborn. For example, in Shogun 1980 Toranaga sees Blackthorne dive off the ship, headfirst into the water. It’s a technique new to Japan and Toranaga immediately wants to learn to dive (this, by the way, is at the heart of the Toranaga-Anjin relationship; Blackthorne has skills that surprise and intrigue Toranaga, skills he wants to learn). Blackthorne demonstrates the dive. Toranaga and his retainers all try it. However, Toranaga is unable to make a proper dive. Initially, it’s a funny scene; his repeated painful belly flops are comical. But Toranaga’s failure at diving puts him at risk of losing face in front of his followers. Blackthorne eventually demonstrates a simpler method and Toranaga finally succeeds. We learn a lot about Toranaga in that scene — his thrill at learning something new, his joy of playing around in the water, his stubbornness and determination, his pride.

In Shogun 2024, however, Toranaga says he wants to learn to dive, but only watches as Blackthorne repeatedly demonstrates his diving technique. Eventually Toranaga leaps into the water and challenges Blackthorne to a race. We learn almost nothing interesting about Toranaga in the 2024 version.

Another example, in Shogun 1980 Blackthorne is being entertained by some women and he becomes a wee bit drunk and high-spirited. He sings a shanty and dances a hornpipe. The noise draws Toranaga to the room. Blackthorne realizes he’s created a scene (which is frowned upon in Japanese society) and starts to apologize, but Toranaga is intrigued and insists on seeing the dance. He then decides to learn Blackthorne’s dance. We’re treated to a scene in which Toranaga is attempting to dance a hornpipe. It’s wonderfully ridiculous and delightful.

The Toranaga of Shogun 2024 doesn’t dance. He doesn’t laugh, he doesn’t get sentimental, he doesn’t get tipsy, he doesn’t get silly, he doesn’t seem to enjoy much of anything. Throughout the series, he’s almost always stern and serious.

In my opinion, this handicaps Toranaga’s development as a character. This is especially clear after Toranaga’s capitulation to his brother and his announced decision to surrender himself in Osaka. In Shogun 1980 and the novel, we see Toranaga lose his joy; we see him defeated and deflated and depressed; there’s a marked contradiction in his behavior. He’s emotionally diminished. The Toranaga of Shogun 2024, on the other hand, has been consistently sober and serious. When he submits to his brother and Osaka, the change in his demeanor is slight. Instead of showing him emotionally changed, the narrative suggests he’s physically ill as well as depressed. It’s simply not as interesting.

This flaw (and yeah, to me it’s a massive flaw) becomes more obvious at the end of the series. Toranaga makes a series of confessions, including the fact that he’s always wanted to become Shogun. In Shogun 1980, he also admits he had Blackthorne’s ship destroyed to keep him in Japan, largely because he needs Blackthorne — not because of his ship or his skills, but because his alien/outsider status allows Toranaga to have an actual friend, somebody who doesn’t have a Japanese agenda. In both versions of the show, Toranaga declares Blackthorne “makes me laugh.” In Shogun 1980, we see that laughter and we know it’s true. Toranaga makes the same statement in Shogun 2024, but we never see that joyful/playful side, so the comment doesn’t ring true.

Shogun 2024 centers the experience of the Japanese characters, but that makes it a story about political maneuvering. Shogun 2024 is about Toranaga’s hidden agenda to become Shogun, in which Blackthorne plays a minor role. In this version, Blackthorne is actively resistant — hostile, even — to change. He remains boorish, rude, and almost willfully ignorant of Japan’s societal norms. It’s not until the final episode, when he realizes he’s unlikely to be able to return to Europe, that he seems to genuinely adapt to Japanese life. It’s a story about political conflict.

Shogun 1980 (and the novel), on the other hand, is about Blackthorne’s struggle to adapt to a very alien culture, which takes place during a potential civil war in Japan. In this version, Blackthorne realizes there are many positive aspects of this new culture and he eagerly embraces aspects of it. This is maybe most clear in Blackthorne’s enthusiastic “Oh lawdy, I fucking LOVE a hot bath” revelation and his pleasure at the simple cleanliness of Japan. It’s a story about cultural conflict.

Both versions end with Blackthorne realizing he’ll never get to leave Japan. But that awareness lands differently in each version. In Shogun 1980, Blackthorne’s willingness to adapt makes his acceptance less painful; having to live the rest of his life in Japan doesn’t seem like much of a sacrifice. In Shogun 2024, however, Blackthorne having to stay in Japan feels like a prison sentence which he’ll try to make it as palatable as possible.

I found Shogun 2024 to be a more compelling and visually interesting story. But I also think it’s a less enjoyable story.

where’s dookie?

Posted on April 20, 2024 by greg

Whenever I have a story published, I get asked this question: “What’s it about?” And I’m always at a loss for an answer. You’d think, since I wrote the damned thing, that I’d be able to tell folks what the story is about. But that’s the thing about stories…or at least that’s the thing the stories I write (and I suspect that’s true of most writers). They’re never about just one thing.

I have a story in the May/June edition of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine (which, by the way, is an absolutely wonderful magazine if you like short mystery or detective fiction). It’s called Where’s Dookie?. I can confidently say it’s almost certainly the best short story you’ll ever read about Kool-Aid collecting. And yes, that’s a thing: there are actually people who collect Kook-Aid. I wouldn’t make that up. (Okay, in fact, I would make that up, but I’m not.) But it’s not really about Kook-Aid collecting.

I could say it’s probably one of very few pieces of short detective fiction that deals with the obscene cost of insulin. That would be accurate, but the story isn’t about the pharmaceutical industry. I could say the story revolves around the importance of family, which would most definitely be true. But it’s not actually about family. It also deals with the difference between commercial art and art for its own sake, but I’d be lying if I said the story is about art. The story involves issues of gentrification, and dive bar culture, and retirement communities–but it’s not about those things. Not really. The title suggests the story is about Dookie, which it kinda is, but mostly isn’t.

So what IS it about?

I guess it’s about caring. Which may seem like an odd thing for a detective story to be about, but there it is. Caring for the community, caring for the past, caring for the future, caring for your work, caring for people.

But that sounds awfully sappy, doesn’t it. And it sounds so very sincere. Even serious. But how serious can a story be if it involves Kool-Aid collecting and a character named Dookie?

Anyway, the story is out there. Now if anybody asks me what it’s about, I’ll can just point them to this blog post. It may not answer their question, but it’ll save me some time.

one lens, monochrome

Posted on February 16, 2024 by greg

I was maybe 16 years old when I first borrowed my momma’s rangefinder camera and began shooting photographs. It was a completely manual film camera, which meant I had to learn the actual mechanics of photography–the relationships between shutter speed, aperture, and film speed; how the elements interact to determine the depth of field; how to use a light meter.

Basically, I spent a decade or so just goofing around with cameras. Then, for reasons I can’t recall, I decided to take it all a bit more seriously. I bought my first serious camera (a Canon A1) and I began to teach myself, in a semi-methodical way, the practice of photography.

I say ‘semi-methodical’ because I set a sort of loose curriculum for myself. I’d periodically focus on some specific aspect of photography. Portraiture, for example, or capturing motion. When I decided to become more deliberate in terms of composition, I put a 50mm lens on the camera, put the camera on a tripod, and kept it there for a couple of months.

Sometimes you just have to shoot in portrait format.

It was a massive pain in the ass. But it radically changed my approach to shooting. I learned to pay more attention to detail, to be aware of the corners of the compositional frame, to notice distractions within the frame, to be patient, to pre-visualize the composition. Having a prime lens on a tripod slows you down. Instead of simply changing the composition by taking a step forward, or to the left, or squatting down, I’d have to pick up the tripod and move it. Then possibly adjust the height of the camera, or make sure it’s level, or tilting it up or down. It meant thinking about the composition before shooting, and trying to put myself in the right place to avoid any hassle.

Light, reflections, shadows can get weird

Now I’m thinking about doing something similar. I bought an inexpensive 35mm prime lens with the notion of putting it on another old Fujifilm camera (an X-T10) and leaving it there. Again, the idea is to force me to be more deliberate when it comes to composition. I’m also considering using that camera to shoot exclusively in black-and-white, to force myself to pay more attention to line, form, shape, and shadow.

Parked car prevented me from getting the entire ghost sign.

So far, I’ve only taken the X-T10 out once with those restrictions, and I have to say the results were mixed. I’d forgotten some very obvious problems with that approach. For example, physical obstructions can’t be negotiated. If, for example, a parked car makes it impossible to step as far back as you need to get everything you want in the frame, you’re just fucked. And working in monochrome denies you the joy of shooting a photo simply because the colors make something interesting. There was a coffee shop window with yellow, blue, and red vinyl seats, and I was terribly tempted to switch to a color profile. I told myself I can always go back with another camera. Which might be a lie.

Monochrome prevents you from seeing how impossibly green the plants in the snow were.

Shooting with a single prime lens turned out to be annoying as fuck. But it was also weirdly fun. I don’t know how long I’ll continue to abide by my self-imposed ‘prime lens in monochrome’ restrictions (and, of course, I’ll continue to shoot with my older and tinier Fujifilm X10), but my first foray was fun. And fun is what it’s about, right?

At least it is for me.

girl on a swing, with red boots

Posted on January 30, 2024 by greg

I don’t have anything like a schedule, but I have a daily routine. Get up, make coffee, read various news sites, do the Wordle (yes, I still do that every morning, sue me), post my result in a Facebook group (there’s maybe 30 of us; each morning somebody offers up a line from a poem, or a song lyric, or a personal observation, or some fucking thing, after which we post our results and chat), then I look at FB Memories to see what entertained me or pissed me off on that date in the past.

Today I saw this:

There’s a young girl I see every afternoon, swinging on her backyard swing set. She’s not a child–maybe 13 or 14? Older than most kids you see on a swing. But she’s out there every day, in every sort of weather, swinging. She goes really high–as high as possible, given the limitations of Earth physics.

I’ve never seen her face; she’s too far away. I don’t know who she is. But as I’m tapping away on my laptop at the kitchen table, I can look through the window and see her swinging. In the summer she’s out there two or three times every afternoon and evening, swinging until it gets dark. All by herself, swinging.

She’s out there right now. It’s bitter cold–23 degrees, according to the thermometer, with a 20 mph wind; the air is full of blowing snow. And she’s swinging with a passion. I want so badly to take her photograph, but it seems such a private thing, her swinging.

She’s wearing red boots.

I wrote that on 30 January, 2013. Eleven years ago. I never made any effort to find out who she was; it never really mattered. At some point she disappeared. I assume she and her family moved away, but I don’t know. All I know is that I eventually realized it had been a while since I’d seen her swinging.

The swing set stayed there for a few years. Then one day I noticed it too was gone.

It’s probably been six or seven years since the girl in red boots disappeared. But I still remember her and the way she’d swing so hard. She’d lean way back on the upswing, pumping, and it was clear she liked the power behind it. On the backswing, she’d look back over her left shoulder, then stretch out and pump. The rhythm was hypnotic.

I never watched her for very long, and I never felt like I was invading her privacy. At least not in terms of the physical act of swinging; that was done right out in the open in her backyard. But there was also a sense that her swinging was, for her, a sort of portal into a very personal realm of motion and rhythm and wild speed. An emotional space she could, for a short time, occupy entirely by herself. I think the reason I never felt like I was invading her privacy was because when she was swinging, she was in a place that nobody else could ever actually see or share.

It’s like watching somebody on an ice skating rink, or shooting baskets on a public court, or dancing at a club, or digging a ditch. There’s something completely lovely about the physicality of some actions, about the way a person becomes so deeply immersed in the act that nothing and nobody outside the act matters.

One friend, after reading my post, wondered if perhaps the girl was in her backyard swinging because she felt unsafe inside her home. Which was possible, of course. But it never felt (to me) like it was escape swinging. It felt like joyful, celebratory, liberation swinging. Like she was enjoying the purity of it.

Another friend encouraged me to shoot the photo I’d said I was reluctant to shoot. And I actually considered doing that. Several times over the years, in fact. But I just couldn’t do it.

I could justify (to myself, at least) watching her swing for a short time because the act of swinging was so beautiful in itself. But to watch her for more than a minute or two—or to take her photograph—would, I think, have been too intrusive. She was in her own world; I could take a brief glance at it in passing, but in the end it belonged to her and I had no business being there.

I’m aware some people might read this and assume the worst about me; they could choose to interpret this as a pervy justification for voyeurism. The sad thing is, there are enough pervy people out there to validate that sort of suspicion. However, it’s also sad that such suspicion discourages people from appreciating simple, innocent beauty when they see it out in the world. There’s a part of me that believes the girl (and probably her parents) might have enjoyed seeing a photograph of her in her red boots, swinging while snow fell all around her. There’s also a part of me that knows for certain the girl and her parents would not appreciate that photograph being taken without their permission and knowledge.

This is the world we live in. There is no photograph memorializing that day. But the image of her on her swing in the falling snow, wearing her red boots has stayed with me and it’s more vivid than any eleven-year-old photograph could be. I wish you could see it too.

Whoever she is, wherever she’s gone, she has my gratitude.

the women’s march — seven years ago

Posted on January 21, 2024 by greg

Seven years…seems like a lifetime. Donald Trump, with the aid of Vlad Putin, had been installed in the White House. Women decided to protest.

It was really that simple—which is to say it wasn’t simple at all. It was a spontaneous desire to protest, but it took incredible coordination by a group of volunteers. The original plan to march in Washington DC expanded to other major cities, then to more modest cities, then to small towns. In fact, there were satellite protest marches across the globe. There are no truly accurate numbers, but it’s estimated that in the US more than five million people marched that cold January day. That was a little over 1% of the US population. It was, in the end, the largest single-day protest in US history.

The crowd began to gather. We hoped to get 6000. We got 26,000.

A couple of women in Los Angeles had an idea to create a hat that would not only help marchers stay warm, but would also be a visual statement of protest against a man who bragged women would allow him to “grab them by the pussy.” The pink pussy hat idea was flawed (it didn’t represent women of color or trans women) and was later abandoned as a form of protest, but on that day it provided a singularly powerful visual and emotional impact. It was, in a way, a sort of counter MAGA red baseball cap. The hats were also an example of the fundamental opposition to Trump; the vast majority of the pink pussy hats were made by hand by volunteers—often by personal friends of the marchers themselves.

Listening to music; waiting for the speeches to start.

I marched in Des Moines, Iowa. Originally, the organizers thought we’d have a couple of thousand marchers. Later, they hoped to have maybe 6,000. Then they thought it was possible for 10,000 to show up. According to the local newspaper the final estimate was approximately 26,000. (I wrote about the march and the pussy hats a couple days later.)

It was mostly women and girls, but a lot of men showed up as well. All ages. It was as racially diverse as Iowa gets (which, let’s admit it, isn’t terribly diverse). Abled and disabled. We gathered at the Iowa state capitol building. There was music, there was food and hot coffee, there were speeches, there were spontaneous chants, there was singing, and then we…well, marched. I use the term ‘march’ rather loosely. We basically hiked around the capitol grounds. Because this is Iowa, the march itself was far more polite than the signage and the chants; we didn’t block the streets, we didn’t get into any punch-ups with the very few counter-demonstrators, and we didn’t leave a mess for other folks to clean up.

I suppose the march officially ended when we’d returned to our original location, but few people left at that point. It may have been anger and concern that sparked the march and brought us all together, but once we’d gathered there was a pervasive sense of togetherness that everybody seemed reluctant to dismiss. There was a sense of hope, a feeling that if we all acted together—if we all worked for each other—we could mitigate the harm we fully expected to come from a Trump administration.

We were so innocent. Trump was—and still is—worse than we could imagine. He’s done more damage than we thought possible. He had—and still has—more support for his authoritarian, anti-democratic, racist, misogynistic, vindictive agenda than we could conceive. I don’t think any of us had any idea of just how ugly, how hateful, how mean-spirited Trump’s supporters would be. We certainly didn’t anticipate how persistently and aggressively they’d attack long-held civil rights and liberties. We were so terribly innocent.

We’ve put away those hats, but we’ve kept the righteous anger.

It’s been seven years since the March. And we’re tired. Physically tired, emotionally tired, spiritually tired. We’ve put away our pussy hats (I still have mine—made for me by a friend, Kim Denise—stashed in a drawer), and rightly so because they weren’t inclusive. Our confidence in the benefits of protest has eroded; our confidence in our system of governance has been abraded by constant aggressive assaults by right-wing hate.

It’s fucking hard to be optimistic. The March itself, which was a buoyant expression of righteous anger and determination, has become a prolonged grind. It feels like the coming election will determine whether it’s possible for the US to recover from Trumpism.

So it doesn’t matter that we’re tired. We know what we need to do. We don’t need to gather together in person and march again, we don’t need pussy hats, we don’t need clever signs or chants. What we need is pretty simple. We need to gather together in spirit and tell Trump and all his enablers and supporters to go fuck themselves.

Just like the March itself, it’s that simple. Which is to say it’s not simple at all. But it’s necessary.

just another nightmare

Posted on January 5, 2024 by greg

I used to have recurring nightmares. Well, I still have recurring nightmares, but they’re not recurring as often. For a few years, I’d have 2-3 nightmares a week. Like most folks, I occasionally have your basic bog standard bad dream (somebody chasing me, shit like that), but they’re qualitatively different from the recurring nightmares. I can shrug those off. I’m talking about the sort of nightmares that wake you up and sometimes leave you too jittery to go back to sleep. Or too afraid to try to go back to sleep for fear the nightmare will return, and you’re just too fucking fragile to deal with that again.

Now I have a nightmare maybe every month. Maybe every six weeks. Okay, wait…a tangent. Sort of. When I say I have recurring nightmares, I mean I have four basic nightmare scenarios that repeat themselves; the scenarios are based on actual incidents. I’m not going to discuss the scenarios or the incidents that sparked them because that would take too long. And besides, the incidents don’t really matter; what matters is the nightmares.

This is NOT my nightmare, but you get the point.

I’m writing about this because last night (well, early this morning) it happened again. I had a nightmare that woke me up. Here’s the weird thing: when I had them more often, I learned to cope with them. I was so familiar with them, I was often able to defuse them WHILE DREAMING. “Oh, right…light shining under a closed door, I know that one. Just open the door, see the horrible thing, and get on with it.”

I knew what to do when I had those nightmares. If I was too spooked to go back to bed, I knew how to distract myself so I could relax. Read for a while, maybe listen to some music, drink some cold water, eat a spoonful of peanut butter. Something mundane and ordinary to mute the effect of the nightmare.

But now that the recurring nightmares are less frequent, I find I’m sometimes more discombobulated by them. The nightmare that woke me up this morning had one of the usual recurring tropes (the sound of an empty Coke can being twisted back and forth in order to break it into two jagged-edge pieces suitable for hacking at arms and necks). Just at the point where the blood starts, I woke up; the last thing I remember was hearing a voice saying, “That’s not going to be covered by the manufacturer’s guarantee.” Which totally took the edge of the horror, so when I woke up I wasn’t so much terrified as weirdly but uncomfortably amused.

And yet, I was still too anxious to go back to sleep. None of my distraction techniques worked, mainly (I think) because my mind kept repeating that ridiculous phrase, which kept the nightmare alive in my head. Sort of alive.

So here’s me, three hours later, having had my morning coffee and read the news and banged out the Wordle (got it in four, as usual), and still nattering on about the nightmare. But now I think I can go back to bed and get another hour of sleep.

Thanks for listening.

the privilege of the sword

Posted on December 11, 2023 by greg

I don’t know if this is a thing or not, but during the holiday season (which, for those not in the US, is the period between our Thanksgiving and the New Year) I tend to re-read favorite novels. It’s probably got something to do with comfort and quiet and nesting. I don’t know, but there it is and I’m not going to think about it too much.

This year I’ve decided to re-read Ellen Kushner’s The Privilege of the Sword. It’s probably been a decade since I read it, but it’s a novel that resonated with me. I’d read her earlier novel, Swordspoint, a few months before. The Privilege of the Sword (okay, I’m just going to refer to as PotS from now on) isn’t exactly a sequel to the earlier novel, but it’s definitely sequelish. It includes many of the same characters and takes place in the same “fantasy” world.

You’ll note I’ve put “fantasy” in quotation marks. Both novels are often listed as fantasy novels, which is a genre I tend to associate with some sort of magic (and, too often, elves and dragons). I’m fundamentally skeptical about the use of magic (and elves and dragons) in a story, but I accept that they’re inextricably bound up in the fantasy genre. I accept them in the same way that I accept the frequency of murder victims in cozy mysteries. I tend to wince a little when it happens, then get on with the story.

As I started reading Swordspoint, the first novel, I kept waiting for somebody to do something magical. It was sort of like having a new car; you know it’s going to get dinged at some point, so you’re sort of tense every time you leave it in a parking lot. But once somebody opens their car door and dings your fender, you relax a bit. The damage is done. My point is I couldn’t quite relax and enjoy Swordspoint for the first few chapters, because I was waiting for somebody to wave a wand or cast a spell or something. Eventually I realized it wasn’t going to happen. It was a tremendous relief.

There’s no magic in either of these novels (at least not as an element of the story; the magic is in the quality of the writing). These novels are fantasies in the same way one of my childhood favorite books, The Prisoner of Zenda, was a fantasy. They’re set in an imaginary but internally consistent story world, one in which politics and political intrigue play as much a role as the swordplay. The ‘fantasy’ element is the way the story world–its culture, its social norms, its customs and traditions, its concept of status–is maintained and made real.

So why have I decided to read PotS instead of Swordspoint? Because I recall PotS as a more human story. I recall it being funnier, sadder, more simple but more surprising, more elegant, more intelligent, and more (for me, at any rate) emotional. My recollection may be faulty, but I’m relying on it anyway. There’s an excellent chance I’ll reread Swordspoint as well.

The basic plot of PotS (as I recall) is as follows: a young, rather flighty young woman is called to attend her uncle — the mad and deliciously depraved Duke of Tremontaine — who has decided, for obscure reasons and against all tradition, to train her as a swordsman. In both novels, disputes are sometimes/often decided by setting hired swordsmen against each other. The young woman (I think she’s in her teens?) is initially more interested in attending balls and attracting a potential husband, but tolerates her uncle’s peculiarities for her family’s sake. Eventually, she learns to appreciate swordplay both as a skill and for the freedom it provides her. Her new talent and attitude also allows her to help others who aren’t able to help themselves. There are, as I recall, at least a couple of subplots which are woven seamlessly into the narrative.

Some of that may be incorrect, but that’s how I remember it. What I remember most is that delicious feeling of being completely engaged with the story world and the characters who inhabit it.

I’ll start re-reading PotS this evening or tomorrow, depending on when I finish the novel I’m now reading (the most recent Murderbot novel) and how busy I am. I’ll take my time reading it — maybe read 2-3 chapters a day. I may report back here every few chapters.

I confess, I’m a tad hesitant to start re-reading it for fear it won’t quite hold up to my memory and my expectations. It’s always a risk to return to your favorites, isn’t it.

farewell to flickr

Posted on November 28, 2023 by greg

I joined Flickr in December of 2004. For a long time, Flickr–more particularly, a Flickr community called Utata–was a significant part of my daily life. I’ve mentioned this group several times on the blog (just counted–29 posts mentioning Utata) because it was massively influential in my digital life. I made a lot of friends because of Utata. I participated in a lot of photographic projects (both personal projects and group projects). I wrote a large number of essays about photographers (the Sunday Salons) for Utata. I spent hours every week monitoring, promoting, and supporting Utata community discussions. It was a lot of work and I loved it.

The last photograph I posted on Flickr — 01/31/2023

But over time, it became a grind. Part of the problem was classic burnout; I was doing too much, taking on too many tasks, agreeing to too many requests. That was compounded by changes in the way Flickr ran itself — changes in ownership, changes in policies. Those changes had a massive detrimental effect on the way communities operated. Over the last 18 months, I gradually slipped completely out of the orbit around Flickr and Utata. Eventually, I stopped using Flickr altogether. I no longer even thought about it.

Until a few days ago, when I noticed I was still paying for a Pro Flickr membership. It wasn’t a lot of money — less than US$9 a month — but I asked myself why I was spending a hundred dollars a year on something I don’t use. I opened Flickr and saw that I haven’t posted a photograph there since January. I was never a prolific poster; I rarely posted more than one photograph a day. As I became less interested in Utata, I posted fewer and fewer photos.

The true purpose of a fence is to create the desire to climb over it — 08/08/2006 (51,534 views)

Out of curiosity, I checked my Flickr stats. I’d only posted a total of 2412 photographs in my 19 years on Flickr. That’s an average of about 125 photos per year. Only 51 photos were post in all of 2022 — one a week. My most viewed photo was taken in 2006 — a black-and-white image of a converted barn, with an unforgivably long title.

I even went back to check my first photograph on Flickr, which turned out to be a selfie. December 17, 2004. Shot with my very first digital camera: a 4 megapixel Olympus C-770 UltraZoom. I no longer have that jacket; I managed to walk off and leave it behind somewhere. Which is sort of what I’ve done with Flickr and Utata.

Nineteen years is a long time in a relationship. But this morning I canceled my Flickr Pro membership. Not my membership–just my paid membership. It’s more of a symbolic gesture than anything else. It’s me saving nine bucks a month. Maybe I’ll use that money to buy another jean jacket.

I sort of expected canceling my Pro membership would make me feel something. It seems like it ought to mean something, like leaving this behind should carry more weight. But it doesn’t. I guess that’s evidence that I’ve made the right decision.

I’ll continue to shoot photographs, of course. After all, I’ve just recently re-discovered the joy of shooting my 12-year-old Fujifilm X10 (which, by the way, would fit perfectly in the pocket of that jean jacket I no longer have). I can’t imagine NOT shooting photos. Or thinking about photography. Even when I don’t have a camera with me, I shoot photos in my mind. The fact is, absolutely nothing will change, except nine dollars will no longer be automatically deducted from my checking account. The ONLY actual thing that will come out canceling my Flickr subscription is this announcement.

That probably ought to be sad. But it’s not. It’s just something I did this morning after coffee.

gregfallis.com

it's this or get a real job

Category Archives: confessional crap