Monday 29 September 2014

The Conundrum of the Selfie

I don't get it. 

I mean I do it and I still don't understand it..


Why do people take selfies? What is the purpose of these impertinently recurrent, generally-devoid-of-meaning photographs? They inundate social media websites and consume the albums on iPods and iPhones and iPads and every technological device commonly held in the hands of today's younger generations.They're annoying, filtered, self-esteem-damaging and seem to drain meaning out of everything. But perhaps I'm being melodramatic. Just a bit.


I'll admit that I often indulge in the menial activity, so much so that it actually concerns me somewhat. Yet I'm not entirely sure why.


Probably for attention, but then... you don't always show other people the photos you've taken. In the end seflies tend to generate feelings of insecurity, I've found, and in some cases it becomes some sort of addiction. People take seflies daily as if to prove that they are beautiful and reassure themselves that they meet the superficial standards of the modern day society. Which, in all honesty, is a task/thought process that becomes psychologically impairing.




Why capture a snapshot of a moment by taking a posed picture of yourself? Because regardless of how pretty you are in the photograph, it's not how you would usually look. You're fixing your hair, moving to the side that suits you best and then filtering the photograph to improve your skin.

By all accounts, the picture lacks a certain aspect of real.

To be honest I'd much rather take pictures of the way a vine curls over someone's fence or the dappling light glinting through tall trees late in the afternoon. Or storm clouds moving swiftly across the sky on the way home from school, dipping low and bruising a deep blue.


Honestly, you can look in the mirror anytime and those people who see your selfies on their wall? Already know what you look like. Sometimes there are photos you have to take, to preserve the beauty of a moment of a thing.


But, to quote the new television show Selfie, in taking a selfie to try and capture the moment:


"You think that you're getting it, but you are in fact, missing it." ~ Henry Higgs, Selfie.


Just a thought. Or really, a train of thought that started off strong and then kind of petered off into some semblance of a rant or perhaps a random philosophical debate.

Saturday 6 September 2014

Writing

Writing is a peculiar means of communication. One can express emotion and meaning in as little as one word, or they can create a symphony with thousands. One may tell stories, send a message, educate, speculate, evaluate.

There are a thousand different uses in writing and regardless of which, what is formed by the individual person is unique entirely to them. No style is the same. Every writer conducts a different orchestra and composes a different song.


For me, writing is an outlet, an expression, an escape. A world to fall into when my own becomes too much to bear. A place to admit how I feel when my skin is stretched tight over my bones and my stomach clenches like a coiled spring. When I want to shout and cry and scream at the ground and the sky and the moon because why does this have to be so hard. When I can't show how I feel inside and it builds like a pressure until it hurts to breathe. Writing is release. A singular salvation from a tremulous world collapsing under the weight of peer pressure and expectations.


So, that's me. There.


And on a more cheerful note: Welcome to my Blog! The place where I will be talking about anything and everything, about politics, world problems, teenage drama, ridiculous things and sometimes stuff I just have to get off my chest.


Also: writing. Lots of writing. Songs and poems and short stories. Yeah.


Fair warning: Inconsistent posting and general ridiculousness.