For the eyes. For the heart. For the ears. For the feet. For the soul.

Monday, May 9, 2011

A drug of choice.





I feel a familiar sense of annoyance creeping in. This happens to me every so often. You see, I have an extremely addictive personality. I find it ironic that my favourite perfume is Christian Dior's Addict. Let's face it, life is pretty mundane but every so often, you stumble upon something or someone that makes you feel alive and exhilarated!

I can cite a few times in my life that I have felt this way. The first time I ever danced to music as a young child. That feeling of my feet and body moving to the beat was something that never went away. I spent many a night and morning gliding through the core shaking vibrations of house music, my ears, my feet and more importantly my soul being elevated to heights not thought possible.

Writing is another outlet that takes me to higher levels. Too often I am distracted by life's daily agenda and I find myself bottling up what wants to naturally flow from my fingertips.

Photography to me is something that follows suit to writing and the two compliment each other wholly. Creatively speaking, writing is my first love. I feel lately that my vocabulary is becoming stagnant. I'm looking forward to a week at the cottage this summer where I'm going to unplug from the internet and just read books by the dock the entire time. Photography is something that does and does not come naturally to me. There is so much to learn and I am quite eager. This is where the annoyance part comes in. They say that when you think of an idea, at that exact moment there are thousands of others thinking of the same thing and out of those thousands, hundreds who will actually take that idea to fruition and out of those hundreds, a handful who will become successful.

I'm the type of person, right or wrong, that once everyone is doing something, I initially don't want to anymore. I'm not a competitive person, and I think by nature, most people are. Competition is what drives us and pushes us further ahead. For me, I just feel irritated and move on to the next thing. It's like blogging....everyone has a blog. Everyone is a photographer. Everyone loves Adele. Everyone does yoga. Everyone has read "The Secret". Everyone drinks Starbucks. Everyone loves Raymond. Err, everybody does.

I'm not saying I'm a trendsetter by any stretch of the means. I've never been a leader yet I don't follow either. I like to dance to my own beat as I've often liked to say and do my own thing, drifting and wandering wherever my feet and my heart tell me to go.

I feel that my photos are good but that with digital equipment these days, everyone's are good.
It's hard to try to be different and that's why I just try to be me. It's like when I got married. There is no way I wanted to or even could compete with the $100,000 Italian weddings I have been a part of so why bother? I went away to get married, which is something I have always wanted to do. Guess what? That's becoming the norm too. There were 15 weddings at our resort in Punta Cana a couple of weeks ago. It all started to feel a little cookie cutter. I feel the most comfortable just capturing life as it happens. The second things start to feel unnatural to me is when I have to plan and pose these moments. This will be my downfall in photography, I'm sure of it. I literally cringe at posing people and even more so at the end result. People smile, but deep down, their real smiles are the most sincere during the in between.

Maybe it's the only child in me but just as I start to feel like I'm blending in and doing what everyone else is doing, I feel a sense of restless stirring to flee. Perhaps this is why I never followed the pattern that most did growing up. I never became a teacher. I never got married young. I don't have kids. I cringe at invites to showers. I turn down invitations to tupperware parties. I am not saying there is anything wrong with these things. In fact I used to sometimes wish I would follow suit, just to more easily fit in. I'm forever on the pursuit of new knowledge
and that makes me somewhat of a wanderer. The downside to this is the perception that people or things are somewhat disposable. Perhaps this is why I stray away from getting attached to anything in this world.

Music moves me to my very core. I think one of the best gifts someone could give me is the introduction to new tunes. Every so often, a wonderful gentleman (who is in his 70's....I cannot believe the knowledge of world music he has!) give me a handful of CD's to listen to. In the latest batch, I was introduced to Lykke Li. It was love at first listen. When drowning out the moans of the world, she makes love to my soul with her tone, lyrics and beat. I feel that familiar sense of adrenaline rush in and I know all too well she's got me hooked.

I'm officially addicted to this drug of choice.


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