Looking through photography stuff here lately, particularly film, I'm inevitably flung back through my own photographic history. It was something I did for so long and was my main creative outlet once music making was unceremoniously dumped. Read the electric words "f8 and be there" at some crucial point as a kid and everything just clicked (ha). Coming into contact with the work of Kertész, Siskind and others helped it along, even if my focus ended up being less urban scenes and more natural details. Early on I veered away from any careful studio space, opting for found details in passing-- never wanting to "fix" a scene so much as find my place in relation to it.
If any ethos came out of that over the next couple decades for me, I suppose it was something like this; that we're walking amidst a billion different compositions and awarenesses every second of every day, and those billion moments transform into a billion new ones with each tick of that second hand and change of the light and state of the viewer, and it's all we can do to be halfway mindful of that passage, purposely aligning ourselves and our tools with any one of those moments and thus open ourselves to any given moment's potential, locking it on a new timeline of our own devising, and later reflection. Whether through serendipity or considered technical know-how... it all runs along the same path of being present, being available.
For a severely anxious youth it was an "always on" grounding exercise before I was ever aware of such an idea, helping me engage (and stay engaged) with the world. And as a severely anxious adult, I can map the extent to which I've fallen away from that practice, souring so much of my involvement with that big Out There. Especially post-2020, with a fully formed agoraphobia I think I'm only beginning to acknowledge directly. Maybe 2024 can be a careful, easy-does-it shift back towards something like that daily photographic drive. Move away from out-and-about phone snaps and back to dedicated photowalks... maybe even occasionally with a single roll of film or a single lens to help narrow the purpose.