Monday 5 November 2007

Life: motivations



Many times I'm surprised when I hear somebody justifying their intentions when shooting. In some cases it's impossible, and easier to borrow somebody else's words. Finally found some that fit for me:

"The price for license is high: it consists of a forfeit of adulthood. And yet he loved it here. The noise and stirrings represented authentic life. Some people found all this evil: he did not. People who thought that were wrong. The restless, roving banks of males who sought God knew what - they themselves didn't know: their striving was the genuine under-urge of protoplasmic material itself. This irritable ceaseless motion had once carried life right out of the sea and onto land; creatures of the land now, they still roamed on, up one street and down another. And he went along with them."

Those are words from Philip K. Dick describing Tijuana in 2055. I think they fit for what I see in Cardiff now, and what I genuinely can see everywhere when searched for deep enough. Everything else would be giving up life and just being a walking carcass. Maybe this lust for life -always looking for more, now, in the present, even if not knowing what- might seem like a behavioural trait limited to childhood or to the teenage years. I remember in the Staff Club this man, Lewis, 84 years old, injured in the world war fighting in El Alamein, all his sisters dead, living alone without children in Port Talbot show the same lust. A woman, a few decades younger stood up to grab her pint. Lewis seeing this, pinched her ass. No moral question, just the satisfaction of the self. At 84! Without anything to win or lose, just because he wanted to. Not even loneliness, age, health can bring the lust down.

Is then all immoral action a celebration of life? Probably not. I haven't seen many fights in St Mary street surprisingly. But when people are in this state (I hate that people say that I take pictures of people off their faces, which is what I do, in a way) I wonder what we are like. Are we in essence what I see at night or is this what we become? If it did not lead to uttermost chaos and destruction, is this what we should be? Undisturbed free flowing life or illusion? No moral concerns before making an action, no moral remorse of its consequences. The perfect establishment for the self as far as the lack of rules is agreed by all those taking part.

Some more lust for life by Iggy Pop:

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