The Work to Play Equilibrium

Balance, it seems, is somewhat of an illusive character. Not in terms of being able to stand up straight or be like Philippe Petit (photo below). No, life balance, work and play, are in a constant act of balancing with work playing the role of the ten ton weight. The age old saying, ” All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” rings painfully true. If I’m not at my day job, which often over runs the constraints of the 9-5 (not that I’m complaining in the slightest!) I’m working on another of my harebrained schemes. I feel that I may well be one chemical spill away from opening a laboratory and concocting evil plans to kill Superman. Insanity lingers in my morning coffee. My dreams have become flooded with work related nuggets: press releases, Christmas cards and ringing phones. I’ve not yet been chased by a rogue Christmas card but I feel a missed time chunk of cheese in the evening and I might well be fleeing from it across a field.

London is of course not aiding my sorry slide in madness; the underground really seems to test my sanity on a daily basis. Some of the nuggets of bonkersness are: being stuck in an entire carriage rammed with vampires at Halloween (should note that vampires don’t exist, they aren’t real people, move on), a 70 year old man swinging on the handles of the tube singing “I’m the king of the swingers” at about the third rendition the woman sat next to me lent over and muttered, “he does this everyday” and finally a man dressed as Batman at 3pm on a Wednesday, enough said.

So why has my December kicked off my mumbling grumblings? I could blame it on the winter blues, the never ending noise of London or the long work hours. That would be a lie though, it’s that balance I spoke of. The work to play ratio is clearly not equal, making me feel lopsided (not physical, I’m not up a bell tower, yet). My evening entrapments usually revolve around working or melting whatever still exists of my brain in front of the telly box. Escapism is king. You can now probably understand why I haven’t blogged in what seems like eons simply because my imagination has been stifled. Held captive by the mundane and the routine. Nothing has sparked my imagination ‘fire’ (not an imaginary fire, I’m not seeing piles of wood and kindling everywhere).

So how have I cured this? I was going to lie to you and tell you I have been dabbling in booze and drugs but I’m not even slightly rock and or roll. In truth, my remedy was simply finding somewhere for me to think, to mull over ideas and to observe. In Durham it was a bridge over looking the stunning Cathedral and in India I would sit on the rooftops and watch the streets below. London’s solution, however, is less glamorous but incredibly effective: the tube. The place full of drunks, bright lights and indescribable smells shouldn’t work. The abundance of things that shouldn’t inspire does the exact opposite. I sit on the tube for hours and scribble away furiously. Crazy? Of course. But when has anything I’ve ever done made sense?

So I’m back and at full capacity firing on all metaphorical cylinders. Right, must dash, this is my stop.

The lights are on but nobody’s home

This weekend I travelled back up to Durham for Lumiere Festival (festival of lights for those not in the know). Those who have been an avid reader of this blog will know that I went to Durham University and graduated a year and a half ago. With a few remaining friends still lingering on in there my group of friends (aka The Clique) decided that we should travel up for one large reunion under the premise of art. It has been about 6 months since I was last at Durham, oddly, the place no longer felt like it used to. It had been my home for 3 years. Durham is often called the bubble and truly felt like that at the time. The world outside seemed to pale in comparison with the small perfect town. Since I left many things have changed for me: journalism in India, photography business, moving and working in London. Yet Durham seemed in my mind this unchanging object. A fixed point in time. On the face of it, arriving on Friday night it seemed that way the cathedral lit up scything through the sky, unchanged for centuries, a beacon for those seeking salvation.

“People, define a place” is a saying I’ve had for many years, mainly when travelling but when I arrived at a bar that saw many of my student days/finances spent in, it became evident that this saying was now applicable to Durham too. Despite being fit to bursting, the place seemed void of people I had spent some of the best years with. You are probably all now shouting at the screen that I am being ridiculously sentimental and I am but for those who have been back to old haunts such as university towns or cities you used to work in, that unsettling feeling of not belonging anymore haunts you.

The city itself was as beautiful as ever, the light installations added to its indisputable beauty and my friends remain as always my brilliantly bonkers family. I don’t want to say that it felt like a concluding chapter to my Durham life but it did feel, however, like it could be. If I never go back, I would not be filled with the regret of not returning.

Durham will always, always holds this incredible place for me. I’m sure I am not the only one who walks down the streets of somewhere they have spent many years in looking at places and vividly picturing your past self creating that memory.

Its a sad thing to look back too much as you end up not looking forward at all. However, the majority of the weekend has been spent by all of us looking back: our first meetings, parties, loves, leavings, the whole spectrum of memories relived through a city where memories pervade its walls.

We have all moved on since then: City jobs, Phds, doctors, teachers, working for charities (myself) or -like many graduates- looking for work, but Durham was where we all started our career’s choices and future fancies and in that way it will always remain the same. As the place our lives began.

Sorry for the rather self involved and rambling post and also for the considerable lack of posts these past few months, I am working on a few of them at the moment, normal service will resume soon.

Harry Potter and The Never-Ending Corridor

The first time I walked through the stunningly beautiful Cloisters of Durham Cathedral I was being anything but studious, despite my surroundings. I wasn’t contemplating the meaning of life, debating Locke’s Political Theory with my fellow students or even reading Alexander Wells’ thriller on Structural Inorganic Chemistry. I was in a gown, waving a stick at other people and shouting in Latin.

It’s not because I had gone completely mad (although I’m almost there) but because of Harry Potter. Sections of the first two films were filmed in the Cloisters and other locations within the jaw-dropping Cathedral. According to the Dean of the Cathedral, the popularity of Harry Potter has made not only me and a few friends pretend to be in Hogwarts, but hundreds of students, who each year attempt to recreate the films.

My photograph illustrates why they must have chosen this location for the film because, even without CGI or Alan Rickman, it is still completely magical.

A Snow Photo with a Warning!

Snowcapped Cathedral

I took this photo while I was in Durham last weekend, on the walk up the incredibly snowy roads to the train station I was gifted with this brilliant photo of the Cathedral.

Graffiti: the good, the bad and the ugly

Graffiti is art to some and repulsive to many. It divides people, cities and societies, with its often political and cultural anarchism. An army of thousands, graffiti artists constantly re-design the urban landscape. For me graffiti is an art form for the modern world, with masters like Banksy and Invader whose works have both brilliance and beauty. However, the many ruin it for the few, with pathetic pre-teens scribbling their gang names throughout urban areas like a dog urinating on a tree to mark it’s territory.

Graffiti has the incredible power to be funny in a plethora of ways. In Rome someone had stencilled a huge and elaborate Carp fish and next to it someone else had sprawled in untidy and dripping writing ‘Diem’. If you don’t get it shame on you and Google Carpe Diem. Another brilliant example of graffitied humour, perhaps by mistake was in Durham. Someone had sprayed ‘f**k iPods’ on a back entrance wall of a supermarket. Not f**k Apple as a company but f**k the specific product they create. So it was either a political and technological poke at the iPod or simply some numpty with no clue what to f**k. However, what I find the funniest is the multitude of love notes like ‘KC 4 GW 4EVA’ in every public toilet or scratched into trees. You know that if they can’t spell forever it’s just not going to last that long and soon it will be changed to ‘KC 4 GW 4EVA till she slept with that bloke from work’.

The Invader’s graffiti art is one of my favourites because it’s simple in its design but brilliant in its virus like expansion. Invader is a French artist who pastes up small colour mosaics to create characters from the game Space Invaders. It began in the 1990s and since then it has spread from its origins in Paris to the rest of the world in countries like Nepal, Australia, America and Japan. The reason I think its so resplendent is it’s bright colours set on the background of dark stoned buildings dotted around cities, I find it really uplifting. Banksy for me is the sovereign of spray can humour, a quote from his book Wall and Peace sums up graffiti as an art “Despite what they say graffiti is not the lowest form of art. Although you might have to creep about at night and lie to your mum it’s actually one of the more honest art forms available. There is no elitism of hype, it exhibits on the best walls a town has to offer and nobody is put off by the prices of admissions.” His genius stencil art is always funny and often carries with it a culturally poignant undertone. Banksy’s most risky pieces were the ones he stencilled on the Segregation Wall in Palestine; he drew windows with views and ladders to highlight the prison like walls that had been created. I urge you to look at Banksy’s collection online here as it is incredible.

Have I ever done graffiti?
Yes, once and for me it sums up what graffiti is. I was about to leave university and I wrote under the desk a very simple and clear instruction “Never forget me – James Dunn 2010”. For the most part that defines what graffiti is, an attempt to be remembered through etched on words. The acts of vandalism are essentially acts of self-preservation, whether it be the anonymous guy who writes dirty jokes in public toilets or people like Banksy, whose name (even though it is a pseudonym) is legendary.

In the end they are all just trying to be remembered, immortalised through words and colours.

My best photograph of Durham

Why its worth getting up at 5am in Durham…