Awful news, which highlights how much the LGBT community still has to fight.
Who needs Christian Bale’s navel gazing when you have this melancholy Batman?!
The secret life of miniature batman – French artist and photographer Rémi Noël takes a classic ‘Batman’ 1989 movie action figure on a tour of the American Southwest in a fun and surprisingly moving photography series.
This post is part of our second Theme Week where since last Friday, you the public had the chance to choose between 5 themes/inspirations for each post this week. Yet again you chose probably the most challenging theme we had listed: ‘Miniature’ Hope you enjoy… 🙂
Hindsight enables us to be glib, it also enables us to learn. I’m still hoping for the latter.
Blossom+sumptuous architecture
The glorious Southbank
Sunny sunshiney
It’s a goat!
Grateful being friends with my ex
Gift my nephew made
I’ve been struggling the last week or so – looking back, the signs were there. After c. 30 years of attempting to manage a mental illness, you would have thought I’d recognise signs of the ‘creeping dread’… Things came to head literally and metaphorically with a particularly unpleasant eye infection.
Not bad on its own but, as anyone knows who has tangoed with mental illness, that’s really not the point. Things that you can usually cope with become a slog and add to the difficulty that depression et al can give.
Cafe standing the test of time
Beautiful bag
Bein with my niece and nephew
Colours amongst the grey
Swirly twirly signs
Crocus – harbinger of Spring
I *know* this is a phase, I *know* it will pass, but it’s a hideous, upsetting experience that makes me want to crawl under the duvet, ball my eyes out and ignore the world. The eye infection became an outward illustration of how I felt about myself, and it wasn’t pretty. I know the tricks – this gratitude process is one of them – but it became a major effort to even leave home and the effort drained me. Perceived slights from friends increased my isolation and further strengthened the negative thoughts I held/hold about myself.
This wading through treacle has made me (re)realise that I need to reach out; now is seriously not the time to hibernate, self harm in whichever way currently seems appropriate – but to pick up the phone and connect with friends. This has meant that I’ve had to be more truthful than usual – previously I could just say ‘wanna get a beer?’ – but this time I’ve had to be honest, actually *say* that I’m struggling and that even a quick catch-up would work wonders.
That honesty has paid off. The duvet is still calling me, but it’s put down its megaphone. And hopefully, now those friends understand, the next time will be easier.
Being close to water
Thrill I still get of being in a hotel room
A friend that gives me the smiles
Beautiful architecture
My annoying (loveable) cat
Green ghost
If you have a mental illness or know someone who has, I encourage you to check out Mind‘s campaign of Time to Talk – it explains the power of checking in on a friend with a quick call, text, tweet, Facebook post, email, whatever. It can make all the difference.
Man and nature
Spring is springing
Underneath the wobbly bridge
This book gave my the words to describe my depression
The last couple of weeks have been bumpy; the usual dissenting voices have picked up the party line and it’s been a struggle to focus on the positive conversations.
Reminding myself of the old management trick of focusing on one step at a time has helped – instead of jumping ahead and fixating on unachievable goals – but so has this project.
I’m great at losing momentum – I go hell for leather on a project then have the logistical, less creative steps affect my enthusiasm. But I’ve reached the second month and I’m still taking photos and training myself to think about what I have – not what I haven’t. It’s also making an impact on other projects – my hopes of running a participatory photography course are a tad closer.
The kind stranger has continued to send me fascinating photos and info about my uncle and, combined with the human rights atrocities in Russia, I’m tapping into personal strength – standing up for what is right and what I want.
Whilst reading about the hideous crimes inflicted on Russia’s LGBT community, I stumbled across Edmund Burke’s inspirational quote: “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.” We have the power and responsibility to ensure human rights abuses are tackled head on. Martin Niemueller’s quote dares us not to take a stand:
First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out – Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out – Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out – Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me – and there was no one left to speak for me.
Movies films flicks
Soho colour
Home cooking
One of my first bikes was Raleigh
Fruit – love it
Wildlife amid buildings
raindrops and sunshine
Yum, panettone
one of my fave sculptures
crudery rudery
Books book books
My friendly, local restaurant
Dad’s DIY
Mum’s food blender
This week I’ve had a mountain for which I’m grateful. Out of the blue, I received a response to a post I made asking for info about Uncle Trevor. All of that is better off in another blog, but this man unwittingly flung open a door and shed light on a life I never knew.
Although the end of Trevor’s life was fraught and isolated, this kind stranger has shared his photos, his memories and contacted friends who knew Trevor – all to show me that, at one time, he enjoyed life to the full.
I didn’t realise, until I typed that paragraph, how grateful I am for the time in which I live. Things aren’t perfect – I still face homophobic abuse, there will still be people who literally hate me and want me dead because of my sexuality – but I know that I have a strong core of people who love me and who will do their utmost to fight for me. I also now have something I think my uncle lost or never had – a sinewy streak of love and pride for myself that protects me from thinking that I’m worthless.
Maybe that was the gift he gave me.
Seeing my Uncle Trevor with friends
gay salads
Cutty Sark – the first trip I had to London
Canary Wharf light streaks
Royal Festival Hall – a home for arts & meeting friends
Brixton’s multiculturalism
Tate membership – access to amazing art
Yesterday I was told about the suicide of a friend of a friend. I didn’t know this person but, after some basic research, I found out he had rented a room on the top floor of a hotel and jumped from the roof.
I felt such a wave of unconditional support and empathetic pain for this poor man who just couldn’t cope. The premeditation of his suicide chilled me. Looking at the number of caring comments on Facebook, following a bereavement he suffered last year, both reminded me how isolating depression can be and how hard it is to ask for help from people who love us.
It also made me realise that I will never again (I hope) feel suicidal. I’ve accrued enough skills to weather the storm of depression – not to say it’s easy, it’s certainly not – but I have a toolbox of healthy coping mechanisms and gold medallist friends in whom I can confide and who, in turn, know the signs and will intervene.
I feel such pity, sadness and anger for this poor man’s death, but gratitude for the fortitude and awareness I’ve learnt over the years. Suicide is never depression’s answer – but it sometimes takes superhuman strength to ask for help.
UK based support: Mind, The Samaritans, The London Lesbian and Gay Switchboard (you can call from anywhere in the UK). National Alliance on Mental Illness – based in the USA.
Local parks
My wonderful niece and nephew
Intricate structure lit beautifully
Signs of life on bare branches
Coffee with my best friend
Gnomes. They make me smile
Love the bus if I’m in no hurry
The concept of being mindful of what one has seems to be working. Granted, I’m not yet two weeks into the new year, but I find myself less stressed, more aware of Good Things and more re-connected with my camera.
True to the Law of Unintended Consequence, it’s triggered conversations about the mechanics of happiness and contentment. Can you be content as well as aspirational? Is being aspirational a Bad Thing? Should we be happy with our lot and not get ideas above our station?
What about the importance of personal improvement to become the best we can feasibly be? What happens when aspiration becomes unachievable goal setting – the harridan of mental health? How do we know the difference? Is it so wrong to strive? Or is it more of a matter of trying hard, but being willing to accept any outcome?
Mythical detail
Repetitive patterns
Creative graffiti stickers
sky+reflection = happy
Love a tattoo
I heart Monster Munch
Scrumped or allotment fruit liquer
Happy New Year to all you wonderful people. I hope your year is successful, however you define that word.
It’s tempting to launch into the usual resolutions – lose weight, get fitter, save money, find love, blah. I’ve previously used those tags as a launch pad for the new year, then used to them flagellate myself when the inevitable happens.
This year I’m experimenting with a year long project to Make Me Happy. A lot has been said about the power of gratitude, which has consistently washed over me as I’m the kind of guy who still sends cards to thank people. But, it’s much more than that – it’s about being presently grateful for what we have; a nurturing constant recognition that there’s usually something great, amazing or touching in our lives, no matter how much shit is sliding down our face.
I’ve battled throughout my life with introspective negative thinking: what’s wrong with me? if I had more money I’d be happy, if I had a boyfriend I’d be happy, if I lived in a nicer area I’d be happy, if I had an Abercrombie body I’d be happier. It’s been a constant, low level gurgling and it’s tiring. So I’ve decided to take a meta view – focus on what I have, not what I don’t – and hope that taking a photo each day of something for which I’m grateful will, theoretically and gradually, drown out the negativity with *gulp* happiness. For more info on the idea, check out 365Grateful.
My parents are my bedrock
I’m grateful for the access to unusual theatre
The way the sun streams into my living room
Knowing my friends are there
Having odd, creative friends
Wowsers, it’s been a long time since I’ve been on here – and a long time since I’ve been proactive on this project.
What fascinates me is that with whomever I speak, I get a different side. A multisided story building to reflect a multisided person. One person’s tale isn’t wrong, it’s absolutely correct – according to them. The more I delve, the more I find and – although I’ve talked a lot about Trevor to my family – a little more information is revealed each time.
Recently I spoke with Mum, Trevor’s sister, who still carries survivor’s guilt with her; intermingled is guilt relating to not standing up to her other brother, Terry – the oldest of the three and always the dominant one.
When I was a kid I remember Mum telling me that, one day, she had an awful burning sensation in her legs – only later to find out that Trevor had spilt hot oil on his legs at work; they seemed to have had an almost twin-like connection. On this occasion, though, Mum recounted a story I’d never heard: the day of Trevor’s death she felt a dreadful sense of foreboding. She asked her boss if she could use the phone to call Trevor’s neighbour to know whether she’d seen him before he left for his oil rig shift; the neighbour hadn’t, so Mum was determined to visit straight after work. Dad decided it wasn’t a good idea – obviously sensing the fear in his wife – so went with Terry instead.
What happened next I can’t be sure of. Mum doesn’t even know whether Trevor left a suicide note and Dad’s version of events is hazy. Terry cleared everything away – when I say ‘cleared’ I mean he threw away everything Mum couldn’t grab first. Seeing Terry hold Trevor’s cufflinks, Mum asked for them, but Terry didn’t see the point in keeping them so tossed them into the bin. Mum’s pride stopped her from getting on her hands and knees and rifling through the rubbish – I could sense the anger and impotence in her voice over twenty years later. Her anger wasn’t just about her own brother having such little respect, but I think it was also her raging at the patriarchal framework in which she found herself. It was either her husband or surviving brother who called the shots.
What I found out next distressed me. Trevor was cremated at the same crematorium as his parents – my grandparents – but, because Terry was eldest, he took charge and decided that it wouldn’t be right for Trevor to be interred with his parents. So, the man who had felt so lonely and so isolated in the latter part of his life was buried at a distance from his parents. I couldn’t help feeling the painful symmetry of the situation. I rang the crematorium to find out more and, apparently, Terry hadn’t even ordered a marker for Trevor’s grave. So, Trevor was buried in an unmarked plot – as if Terry wanted to eradicate all trace of his own brother.
The wonderful lady at the crematorium explained that, although I could order a new marker to include the names of my grandparents and my uncle, they couldn’t exhume his ashes because too much time had passed. Although I don’t believe in life after death, I was upset to think that his ashes – my uncle – would always be separated from his family. I explained the situation to Mum, and said I would be willing to split the cost of a new marker, but the galling caveat was that we need Terry’s permission…
My Uncle Trevor killed himself when I was 18. He was in his late forties, gay, depressed and an alcoholic.
My parents chose to shield me from his funeral for reasons, I assumed, revolving around my ‘sensitivity’ and inability to cope with my first experience of death. As I got older, details slipped out (as they do in families) and I realised that it was more complicated.
I can’t even remember how I knew he was gay; it came as a shock when Dad let slip that Trevor (his brother in law) had actively chosen to kill himself. Trevor’s life, it seems, comes to me in slips and asides.
We gain personal acceptance by having our needs, behaviours and aspirations reflected back and affirmed by the media and those around us. But what happens when you don’t have that? How does your personal strength and sense of adequacy develop? Can it?
For those interested in how growing up gay in a straight world can internalise a well of shame, read Alan Down’s book, The Velvet Rage. It changed my life. Literally.
I was told Trevor had an exciting life as head chef on various prominent cruise liners, traveling the world and sending my brother and I postcards from places we had to find in the atlas. My family regaled me with exciting stories of him smuggling jewels in elaborate wedding cakes for my Nan – of Dad mysteriously having to look after a briefcase of cash for him one night – and seeing the few photos that now survive of him looking dapper or having fun with cruise ship friends.
He left that life and returned to Sittingbourne in the 70’s, a small town in big and little c conservative Kent. Kent was the last county to let go of Section 28, the infamous clause that prohibited schools from ‘promoting’ homosexuality; it is one of the few remaining counties that has grammar schools. It’s a nice place to grow up, but it isn’t progressive. Imagine what it was like in the 70’s.
His family didn’t talk about his sexuality – I can not emphasise enough how damaging this is. It makes people feel ignored, inadequate and shameful; these feelings grow and, if unchecked, can lead to suicide. Trevor’s background meant that he had little chance to grow into a well adjusted, self-accepting and self-loving person.
His friends deserted him as soon as his money did. He had few other confidantes and became reliant on drink, jumping from job to job until his alcoholism made them untenable.
I only became aware of this a few years back. Again, stories slip out and I have to continually adjust my understanding of this man who, if he was allowed to grow up with that self-love so many people take for granted, could have been my compass – the role model I so desperately needed.
There are similarities with Trevor’s life and my own; I don’t feel doomed to repeat his fate, but it does unnerve me. Just as his family’s generation denied and ignored his sexuality, so have parts of mine. Some things change, some don’t.
I’ve decided to work on a multimedia piece on Uncle Trevor, interviewing my family to build a 3d image of the man who could’ve taught me so much. It’s not just about wanting to recreate the person I never really knew, it’s about showing how we’re doomed to screw up a generation if we perpetuate the screw ups of the previous. If my family are willing to talk about it.
Trevor having fun with beer in hand.
richardjenglish 