A familiar stillness is in the air. The world has not yet woken up and I seem to be the only one here on Earth. It feels almost post-apocalyptic. I think back to many of the films and computer games that have inspired me throughout my life so far, and, on mornings like this, I feel like I am the character inside of my own.
All of this time alone on the road gives me time to think. That is the beauty of being awake during these sacred hours, and another reason why I love to travel outside of my immediate local area for photography occasionally. The thinking time in the car is almost as important as the photography itself. I put on some music - ‘Immunity’ by Jon Hopkins is often one that I listen to during travel. The beautiful melody and vocals inspire me to go deeper into my own thoughts; deeper into myself. I often dream about my future, and piece together the puzzle of my life by reflecting upon the past.
This morning, I am in the process of deep reflection. I can’t help but go back to visit a previous version of myself; one who hadn’t held a camera yet, and actually had no idea about what ‘photography’ was.
I never harboured much interest in art when I was younger. I put in minimal effort during art class in school, and instead sat and daydreamed about the computer games that were waiting for me back home. I was an avid gamer from the age of around five or six, until the age of twenty-five. I still remember, as if it was yesterday, the morning when me and my older sister stealthily sneaked downstairs before the sun had risen to turn on our stepfathers’ games console for the first time. That morning, we probably managed to play for an hour or two before he woke. In later years, I could easily rack up ten, sometimes even twelve hours of screen time. I can’t help but think about how much my life, and I, have changed in a relatively short period of time.
Instead of roaming around dreamed up worlds, playing a character from the imagination of someone else, I find myself trudging through ‘Dead Marshes’, roaming the forests of ‘Fangorn’ and post-apocalyptic wastelands here in the real world.
I am inspired to dream again. I wonder what might be possible for this character that is myself, given another few decades of growth. I have been recovering many of the lost parts of myself; the skills and superpowers that I left behind and ran away from as a child; those of empathy, sensitivity and curiosity, all of which us humans are at our core. Now that I have them, and have discovered more of a sense of my authentic ‘Self’, I can’t help but think about many of the other characters that are roaming this world as they play out their own stories, and try to find their own place here in this gigantic jigsaw puzzle.
I look out of the window at the world that is whizzing by. Silhouettes of pine trees against the twilight blue sky. These are the moments that help to reprogram my mind. The order that follows from chaos. No future, nor past. I take a deep breath, and come into the ‘now’. Everything is still. I can hear the stars whisper. Promise of a new dawn echoes in the clear night sky. The mountains draw near. Their outline dominates the horizon. A sense of safety washes over me. I am home.
My destination this morning is a small area of heathland beneath the Moelwynion mountains, just a stones throw away from the birthplace of the red dragon and the grave of the legendary hound, ‘Gelert’. I stumbled upon this land and made friends with a beautifully expressive silver birch tree there back in the summer of 2021, and I return today with the hope of creating a photograph that has been formulating in my minds’ eye since that afternoon.
A blanket of mist has been drawn over the landscape overnight. It seems as though the trees are still tucked in and dreaming beneath the sheets. I dare not wake them up prematurely, so I park up beside the road and tread the half-mile track as lightly as a ballet dancer would on its’ stage.
This landscape, a stage all of its’ own, and the main character in this performance is my friend, the silver birch. As it begins to awaken, I join it on the stage to express myself in the ways that I have learnt to over the past few years; with my camera and words. Two characters in perfect harmony.
I often see parts of myself inside of my photographs, and express from a place deep within. In this case, I see some further parts of myself that perhaps went missing through my younger years. Expression wasn’t particularly encouraged as I grew up. My mother, unsurprisingly following years of abuse, was chronically depressed throughout much of my childhood, so our house was never filled with too much joy. Me and my siblings would play, but always quietly and carefully. My stepfathers’ volatile moods ensured that we would be walking on eggshells for most of our waking hours. He would also place expectation on me to ‘be a man’, meaning that there wasn’t much room for me to display my emotions.
It fills me with a great amount of gratitude to have finally found my methods to express the deeper parts of myself and my emotions using my camera and pen, but still, I look at my friend, the silver birch, with a hint of envy, and wonder what it might be like to sing or dance in front of a crowd, as it does every day to the mountains.
I stand here and dream again for a moment. ‘Who knows where this path might take me in the future’, I think to myself. I come back to the moment, and enjoy the silence and stillness of this magical morning. I open up the shutter on my camera to capture the photograph that I have been dreaming about for eighteen months. It is even more beautiful than I could envision. With this photograph, comes the promise of the new dawn, as whispered by the stars. I have been granted the chance to make of it something better than yesterday.
