three o’clock this morning and we’re playing all the records that we own

I went to Venice maybe twice just a couple of weeks ago, and it feels like such a distant, distant memory now.

In the past week, I have been lucky enough to have celebrated: the engagement of one of my close friends, graduations of seemingly everyone but me, and receiving internship offers from pretty solid law firms for the 2014-15 summer, which is supposed to translate to a graduate position in 2016. Yesterday I played the Div 1 game, winning 5-4, and today’s Div 2A game resulted in a 3-2 win also. Perhaps it’s a little greedy, but I feel all I need for this amazing week to wrap up properly is for West Ham to beat Man City, and for Newcastle to lose…

I feel like I am such a hard person so satisfy. Especially when I’m trying to please myself. I’m often told that I’m overly critical of myself, my work, my efforts, etc. — I guess it’s an inherent trait of a pessimist, but lately the domino effect of life is really taking a toll on me. I’m sure I can’t be the only one that feels like there’s this never-ending list that you check off, in which even successes lead to more work to be done. To point out an obvious example, law school goes something like this: get into law school, get good grades, get into honours, get a summer clerkship, get more good grades, get through honours seminar/dissertation, get through profs, get admitted to the bar…

…and somewhere along there, it’s so terrifyingly easy to forget that any one of those separate things is a notable achievement on its own. It’s just that there is always more to be done, more that could be done, and for someone like me who is somehow ridiculously lazy yet prolific at the same time— well fuck. It’s just a lot of cognizant dissonance. On the one hand I want to have celebratory coffee, lunch, dinner, drinks (beers, beers and more hopefully craft beers), on the other, I’m panicking that upon signing my employment agreement, I’ll need to adhere to the clause where it says my GPA needs to stay up. So now not only will there be the internal pressure (from basic instinct and innate desire?) to do well, but there will also be an external pressure in the form of a legal contract. Good fun.

These photos are actually from the previous time that I was in LA at the end of 2012 — I hadn’t gotten them developed for over a year and a half. Hopefully I’ll see my 2014 films soon, as I’ve dropped them off to be processed.

Taken on Ilford HP5 Plus 400 B/W film with a Nikon F3

in uncertain times I wanna go where my thoughts can take a nap, and if the atom bomb should end us both, I’ll be happy to go to the stars with you

It’s weird being back in real-life for just under a week now, after traipsing up the West Coast from LA up to San Francisco and Seattle, then back down to Malibu to attend my sister’s graduation. I shot purely on film and didn’t even have a digital camera with me, so it will be a while before I start to slowly get my films processed — but hopefully it will be like wine and age into maturity, best to be shared around.

Below are a few of my photos photos from the last batch of film I got back. I was super flattered when Reatha at Film Soup decided to feature these shots as part of her “Scanning of the Week”, you can check out her post here.

All taken on Kodak UltraMax 400 at Hard to Find Bookstore in Onehunga:

It’s funny how these photos captured a golden afternoon in all its glory and nothing else. We’d gone to one of our favourite places, I’d tripped on a book going up the stairs (that place is brimming with books to the point of dangerousness), which led me to almost falling down the stairs, I couldn’t find the book I’d hoped to find, and then was struck with a strange curiosity and moral dilemma when I found a handful of old photos tucked into a book. That sentence is a rambling mouthful to read, but so was that day. It all screeched to a halt when my car remote ran out of battery and I couldn’t deactivate my immoboliser to start the car and didn’t want to ruin his birthday dinner plans. What a mess. And yet the photos show none of this but merely the fleeting split seconds that I had decided to click the shutter, or left it on a timer to put myself in a photograph. I think that’s what I enjoy most about the photos that I take. I’d like to think that they’re very honest and documentary-styled, since I don’t “set-up photoshoots” and stuff — yet I hope they’re kind of fleeting and in media res, maybe making it a little dreamy, that you feel like they might be lying.

Ironically, since I’ve arrived back from America, my little yellow car has finally had its last legs with me, and I feel like my adolescence has really died along with it. All the music that was blast, the excited, cramped, drunken passengers, the driveways and carparks and drive-thrus that car has seen me taxi people in. It’s yet another thing sentiment I just have to put down and let go.

I’m also really struggling with living in the moment right now — I’m looking backwards, at easier days, at happier times, or looking forwards, looking forward to things in the future. There’s a roast dinner to celebrate a friend’s engagement on Thursday evening, or the potential of a job offer, also that day. There’s a comedy act I agreed to go to on Friday, there’s my two hockey games, and maybe getting some music recorded or something, and hopefully cramming in one last surf before my wetsuit becomes too useless for the winter. There’s the further stuff, the promise of the summer holidays, whether I’m working or not, I won’t have to study for a couple of months. I might actually spend all my summer wages on a trip back to my favourite city. Or do something else. Regardless, I keep looking away from the right now and avoiding being in my head. I know that’s how people cope with stress and pain and difficulty (and apparently how Generation Y just likes to live on their smartphones, period), but I know I need to be more present, especially if I want to get my academic shit together. I honestly feel like I would be a straight straight A student if I was getting paid to study, rather than accruing debt to do so. But I’m sure everyone else feels the same. So it’s back to playing catch up on law readings and trying to compose so I can finish my LAST EVER music paper and get one degree finished. Here I go again with the looking-forward-too-much thing. To be honest I’m actually fucking terrified of finishing my music degree.

when I heard the knock on the door, I couldn’t catch my breath — is it too late to call this off?

Last month I handed over seven rolls of film to be couriered, processed and scanned. What happened instead was the courier damaged my films and refuse to be accountable. I hear one of the rolls has been completely flattened, although I really cannot fathom how, since those things are tough m’fuckers that don’t need “fragile” labeling. It’s really been quite the emotional rollercoaster because, dammit, I took some good photos, I know I did!

Here is the roll that’s been the least damaged, but it still suffers from a light leak that I haven’t edited out. I doubt I will ever edit out the scarring that’s happened to my film, but maybe one day I can be convinced otherwise. A few shots have been omitted because there was a two-hour span or so where the camera kept malfunctioning — probably because it hadn’t been used since circa 2006 and probably 1996 before that. I didn’t take my trusty Nikon F3 on the Tongariro Crossing because it was getting repaired but I sure as hell wished I had it with me. Sorry, Contax. Old habits die hard, and I won’t let that camera die until I do.

I’m popping over to the states for my sister’s graduation in a couple of weeks’ time and I may try to shoot LA/Californian National Parks/San Francisco (and maybe Seattle) purely on film. I’ll see how that goes. If anyone wants to meet up, email me.

Tongariro Crossing on Ilford HP5+ 400 B/W film; Contax RTS iii.
P.S. yes, that is an active volcano, gotta love Middle Earth.

so close up your knees, and I’ll close your parenthesis

New York City on Ilford HP5+ 400 B/W film; Nikon F3.

Now that I’m twenty-two, there’s something I’ve been struggling with for a while. I guess I still haven’t really come to terms with my age (it’s too long to insert an explanation here), but this is an awkward stage in a woman’s life, where — see, it’s awkward for me already — let me start over.

Frankly, I feel weird referring to myself as a woman. I realise that I am indeed a woman, and have been old enough to be called one, for some time. It’s not that I associate myself with the word “girl” — I haven’t done so since well before fifteen or sixteen, if I remember correctly — it’s just that the word “woman” comes with so many connotations which I’m not sure I’m ready for yet. For some reason I’ve always felt that a “woman” is someone powerful who, for lack of a more poignant term, has their shit together. I’ll concede that I know people who get the impression that I’m all-confident and self-assured, definitely “powerful” in some way, and have my shit together. But that is just bollocks. In other words, by my own ideal of what a “woman” is, and all the symbolism it carries, I don’t feel like I qualify as one yet. A “young woman” or “young lady”, perhaps, but not quite a full-blown woman. I realise I need to work on this.

Why isn’t there a female equivalent of “guy”? It seems socially acceptable to call a male of any age a “guy”, albeit with varying degrees of acceptability. But I’m not going to call myself a “girl”, especially when I had issues with that word even as a teenager. I can’t seem to find  a solution besides ignoring it, or the practical alternative is to simply dub myself as a “student”. This will work perfectly fine… until I graduate. By then, another set of issues will be triggered, that is, to refer to people by their professions. This is a tangent which I would like to return to, perhaps in another post.

As a side note, I’m a fan of “fake it til you make it” in the confidence department, and I also subscribe to idea that life isn’t about “finding” yourself, but is actually about “creating” yourself. Having said that, I don’t condone any fake-ness and I like feeling that people are “authentic” and aren’t just brand-building, networking, social-climbing schemers. So although I can understand and empathise where people are coming from, I’ve never really enjoyed those bloggers or people in real life who categorise themselves as someone “looking for themselves”. My abbreviated interpretation is: you’re creating yourself and curating your tastes through the means of looking for what you like and love, rather than looking for yourself.

Oh so while you’re growing old under the gun, gun, gun, and I believed them all — well I’m just one poor baby ’cause well I believed them all

I really wanted to post a photo of my happy self, since it was my 22nd birthday yesterday — but I’m only on my laptop (quickie before uni) so I don’t have access to most files and had to whip this low-fi off the dreaded facebook. In true Amanda fashion, I overslept through two classes yesterday morning, and only woke to my friends calling me asking “WHERE ARE YOU?!” so we could go for my birthday lunch. They thought I had intentionally wagged class on my birthday, oops.

Melbourne Big Day Out Friday 26th January 2013, on disposable camera. (The thing on my forehead is a Y from the YYYs)

The other night, I had an application for something that was due a minute before my birthday, at 11.59pm. Due to a torts test and uni all day, I had about two hours left after my hockey training, to finish my cover letter. I don’t think writing such things under time pressure is the best idea, but in writing it, and compiling my CV, I unexpectedly learnt a lot about myself.

At first glance, my CV isn’t exactly cut out for the corporate world whatsoever. I scarily realised that I’d been playing in various music ensembles for the past fifteen years and that it’s been eight years since I started playing hockey and fatefully broke my nose on my birthday. Some days, I feel like what have I got to show for myself?! now that I’m no longer a teenager. Other days I feel like I’ve managed to do quite well in what (relatively) short time I’ve had on this earth. But the thing I realised when I was writing my cover letter was that, I’m quite proud I never really did anything just “because it would look good on a CV”. The pages and lists of things I’d put on there, were truly things that I wanted to do, even if in the cold of winter I didn’t want to train, or didn’t like early morning rehearsals. I wasn’t in those sports teams purely for my ego nor did I spend twelve-hour days at high school because I thought that it would “pay off” one day. And maybe it never will. But it doesn’t matter.

Even if nothing came of this application I submitted, I’m happy that the process of writing it made me feel really content with myself on my birthday. People that know me quite well would know that I struggle to be content with myself — there’s always more I can do, more to be done — so this is a good start. I’m really passionate about the the photos I’ve taken, the experiences I’ve sought out for myself, and bass callouses born from pain.

Whilst I know that law school will always make me anxious that I’m not doing the “right” co-curricular things, I insist on not pretending I’m someone that I’m clearly not. I’m making a conscious decision to continue to only do things that I want to do, rather than because “it would look good”. (Disclaimer: I do realise there will be things that I must do that I don’t necessarily “want” to do or feel passionate about. But I feel there’s a difference between things you’ve got to do in general, versus things above and beyond, merely because it looks nice on a piece of paper)

Also, it’s amazing how many indirectly-relevant and awesome skills I’ve managed to get out of all the “wrong” (read: unconventional) mixture of things that I’ve been doing. Anyone can sit at a desk and grind books into their brains all day, but how many will leave their comfort zones and chase down lofty dreams?

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