the corner office

If I were to name my photographs, I'd call this one "Boy in the Woods". It was a lucky shot, and I really like it. The branches, the colours, the light, my son in there somewhere, even the lense flare.

What you don't see in this bucolic snap, though, is that my son is directly below one of the power lines which cuts across the southern tip of High Elms Country Park, and he's actually listening to the crazy buzzing and crackling sounds the lines make.

A metaphor for online life? The first draft of this post had a long deliberation on social media, and highlight reels, on signalling (and how even writing about signalling is signalling), and my being self-conscious about the kinds of things I wanted to write about on this blog, and why, (ironically, on such a long-running blog, albeit slightly rebooted), and not being quite sure how to resolve it all.

But who needs that? A slightly shorter version, and resolution, in a way, comes by returning to Boy in the Woods. It's a photo. You might like it, you might not, but the fact that there's a power line overhead doesn't detract from the picture itself. It adds an amusing twist, but otherwise doesn't matter. I'm not pretending that I don't live on a cramped island with people and buildings and roads and power lines. I took a photo, and when I saw it later, I thought "that's cool". On top of that, if you know my son, and recognise his posture, or were there, and remember him wandering off quietly through the undergrowth, curious and engaged, then the photo offers another dimension or two to appreciate. But it's still just a photo.

Similarly, whatever I choose to write about here, is still just a bunch of words - you might enjoy reading them, you might not. Etc. Etc. The second draft of this post still waffled on about the parallels, but at this point I'm mainly just looking for an excuse to share the picture.

Earlier versions also said I was planning to put up more photos. I'll leave that bit in.