I stare at the pot of blackened matches on my desk inbetween thoughts.

I think that in some ways they have fulfilled their purpose, they passed their flame to another source of fuel, they have emit light, ignited cigarettes and warmed the hands of travellers, and yet they were extinguished long before exhaustion.

I share a moment with them and mourn the miles of aspen left untouched, hours of unspent light and warmth.

How ridiculous to find common ground with sticks, yet here we stand among half-burned matches and feel the wind smother what could have been.

I wrote that years ago while spending the evening alone in my flat, six songs deep into an album I’ve never listened to and two glasses into last weekends wine. I sat stooped over my desk, I was having one of these moments where I felt deeply in tune with my surroundings, the texture of the pine desk and all its microscopic peaks and troughs and the weight of the air above it. Almost in a meditative state of mindfulness, I would sit by candlelight enjoying the shadows cast and the gentleness on my eyes when the lamp felt too harsh. It would be when lighting the candles that I would pull a match from the box, strike it, and ponder the 90% of the match left unburned. “What a waste” I would think. Strange really, but as a small act of protest I would burn the match until it I could no longer hold it, satisfied that it had reached its full potential, adding it to the pile of other charred sticks.

I coined this ‘deep observation’; becoming intensely aware of one’s surroundings, taking note of otherwise ephemeral moments. It could easily be mistaken for daydreaming or dissociation but that’s not always the case, I prefer to think of it as letting your inner child take the reins and shamelessly stare at what piques your interest and finding the language to describe how it makes you feel. The goal here is to feel, and to experience, perhaps even find a romance in idleness while fighting the urge to fill it with phone. Curiosity was once sinful, a vice depicted in the eating of the forbidden fruit of Eden or the opening of Pandora’s box. Curiosity became virtue with the invention of the microscope where man realised objects were constituted of smaller structures, and the telescope, where he realised we were one of those constituent parts in a structure larger than he could imagine.

Boredom often dissipates our attention and pulls us into rapidly regenerating content that starves the brain of the opportunity to retain information, both of what you watch, and of your surroundings, thus fostering the homogenisation of experience.

ho·mog·e·ni·za·tion

The process of dissolving the distinct textures, rhythms, or boundary lines of individual moments, rendering otherwise varied human experiences into a single, seamless, and uniform whole.

Mémoire Involontaire - The idea that you might lose an entire day to digital amnesia seems bleak and the antithesis of the human experience. We are designed to hold onto the lingering sensation of acute sensory experiences, to name a few anecdotally, the smoke of a particular incense that immediately transports me to Indian spice markets, walking past a lavender bush that reminds me of the french gardens where my grandparents used to live, for a brief second I see through the eyes of my boyhood self for I share his brain and his memories and his eyes. If I can’t be at the emotional mercy of my childhood self and what he chose to find beautiful enough to stare at then I cannot be held responsible for doing the same for my future self.

I will lose the tools necessary to really remember and the skill to observe, really observe, really feel and touch and breathe and store the world. Rich and authentic memory is involuntary, but observation is intentional.

I used to believe that deep observation was promoted and enriched by photographing. This would often manifest in beautiful images that I developed by hand and scanned, building a tactile relationship with it and one that I thought might have longevity as a document and enhance the memory - this wasn’t always the case though. This was also the time in my life I started reading photography theory and became interested in visual culture, and so discovered Susan Sontag. She wrote that taking pictures gives people an "imaginary possession of a past that is unreal" and acts as a defence mechanism against feeling disoriented or bored, it can actually aid in refusing the experience rather than enriching it.

This broke me for a while. It changed my entire belief system around the camera and documentary and remembering. For as long as I could remember I had taken photos as a way of stealing a moment for later, immortalising something completely intangible and keeping it printed in a box in hopes that I might look back at the end of my life and be there once again, seeing as I once did. I don’t think that’s the case anymore, it’s a great tool for engraving details that might blur slightly in our minds, but cannot be the end all of remembering. Deep observation, as it stands as a toolset for remembering, contains several tools that help me create richer and deeper ‘documentary practices’ (memories). These are, crudely, as follows:

• Journalling

  • Both long-form entries as a documentary of events and as bullets or morning pages.

• Intentional photography

  • Leave the phone camera in your pocket, use it sparingly for moments that can be carefully displayed.

• Collecting ephemera

  • I find value in collecting tickets with images on them, receipts with addresses or graphics, or found playing cards.

• Simply looking.

  • Just looking, thinking, smelling, breathing, feeling. The best one, really.

I firmly believe that a careful combination of these four things gives me the tools for remembering more deeply and leaving a trace that can be followed by whoever comes after me, a bread crumb trail of my life.

I don’t want to contribute too heavily to the discourse around mobile phone use, I think its already saturated and also screams self-righteous in a way I wouldn’t want to associate with, but my two cents is that it can be poisonous in large quantities and should be administered cautiously. The danger is that the in between moments all start to look the same because we see them through the same lens. Sight is a privilege and yet so are all the other senses, but they can be neglected when the opportunity to use them is presented. To choose boredom, to daydream, to close your eyes and feel the vibrations of the bus wheels or the grass between your fingers while laying on your back in the garden. This is to be human. To see through my child eyes once again, that’s a visceral type of remembering that I chase on a daily basis.

I sit down at the end of a day and close my eyes, the day’s scent still lingers in my nose. The last 12 hours feels like 48 because as I did in 2005, I stared out of the window and played out other days in my head, a show reel of beautiful things, and my pockets stuffed with paper and prints.

I collected the day, and so stored it away to recall on a Sunday afternoon 20 years later.

My title came Joan Didion, who if you aren’t familiar, was a prolific American writer and journalist, and scrupulous note taker. I, admittedly, haven’t ever read her books and so cannot comment fully on the notions of her life philosophy, however, I have read some of her essays which would always provoke self-reflection. In one in essay written about her life and works, it is mentioned in passing, the writer almost missing the poignancy of the statement, “The book ends with the death of Didion’s mother, who insists Didion take a silver ladle she had saved over the years. “ ‘Take it,’ she said, her voice urgent. ‘I don’t want it lost.’ I was still pretending that she would get through the Sierra before the snows fell,” Didion wrote. “She was not.” Didion once said she believed in using the good silver every day, because “every day is all there is.”

Every day is all there is…

Seldom while reading does something alter my very way of thinking and understanding of the world, and the weighted words will not allow me to proceed until I’ve spent a moment reflecting. Why wait for a speculative future in order to enjoy your life? So succinct, pithy, powerful, and given to the reader so generously, this comment made in passing blew me away. I’ve never believed in saving something for a rainy day, if I’ve been given a fancy candle or a top shelf bottle of wine then I drink or light it when the urge to comes around, but thinking of each day as a lifetime in itself is something I never thought about, and yet it feels like such a revelatory idea. Didion may not have been thinking about the implication of what she said, she was experiencing the loss of a family member and so was painfully reminded of the impermanence of our bodies and our lives, and so was musing on the concept that all we ever really have is the day we exist in.

This title image is from a book called ‘Recipe for a Happy Life” that contains a poem by Queen Margaret of Navarre from over 400 years ago:

Three ounces are necessary, first
of patience,
Then of repose and peace; of conscience
A pound entire is needful;
Of pastimes of all sorts, too,
Should be gathered as much as
the hand can hold;
Of pleasant memory and of hope
three good drachms
There must be at least. But they
should moistened be
With a liquor made from true
pleasures that rejoice the
heart;
Then of love’s magic drops a few,
But use them sparingly, for the^
may bring a flame
Which naught but tears can
drown.
Grind the whole and mix therewith of merriment an ounce
To even. Yet all this may not
bring happiness
Except in your orisons you lift
your voice
To Him who holds the gift of
health.
—Margaret of Navarre (1500).

Queen Margaret was, in true French fashion, structuring her poem as they would have a recipe. The book this poem came from also contains one by an essayist called Joseph Addison in which he writes “A man should endeavour, therefore, to make the sphere of his innocent pleasures as wide as possible, that he may retire into them with safety, and find in them such a satisfaction as a wise man would not blush to take”. Addison was commenting on the importance of one indulging in simplicities such as art, nature, and literature to keep human beings from falling into vice when they are idle. An example of modernities greatest vices would be an endless stream of short-form content that fills any moment of boredom. I often turn to film to fill these gaps in the day.

One of my favourite films, and one I make a point of watching at least twice a year, About Time (2013), explores this theme of seizing the day for we as mortal people are doomed to be reinvented every time we wake up. The protagonist, Tim, is taught of his ability to travel back in time within his own lifetime, as long as he initiates the journey from a dark space. Across the film he is seen fumbling terribly in social situations and returning to replay them until executed perfectly. He directs his new ability onto his pursuit of love, repeating events over and over again attempting faultlessness until he comes to the conclusion that the imperfection in our character is what we are intrinsically as humans, that even after being given the gift that so many would kill for, he abandons it and adopts a philosophy available to any normal man;

That film always breaks me a little bit, but I keep going back to it.

I have an idea of who I think I am, a whole made of constituent values and beliefs that manifest themselves as passions and pursuits of earthly experiences. If today I could make something, write something, read something, listen to something new, watch something new, be outside, communicate with people I value, and contemplate my own place in the world then I have had a good day. One after the other these good days compound into a good life. An extraordinary, ordinary life.

I’ve found that even on a day that bores me to the core, where nothing seems to happen and I don’t go anywhere, it’s still successful because I have experienced, everything is a win if the goal is to experience, which is true even of experiences we’d rather not repeat.

Reading about current affairs from a prolific artist’s perspective like Herzog’s gives me access to topics that might otherwise feel cold and robotic or unaccessible from that of the usual reportage style found in papers or online media, known as the “accountant’s truth“. His way of articulating a subject opens it up to a new interpretation, takes black and white topics like misinformation in media, fake news, and defining ‘truth’, and dissects it while helping us understand that these aren’t new issues, but issues that have been prevalent since the conception of Rome.

Herzog’s rejects facts in search of a greater truth. He separates truth and fact because of what he describes as a collapse of a shared, objective reality. There simply cannot be a single truth in contemporary society as each individual has the tools to invent their own truth using artificial intelligence, or even curating social media pages to display a certain image of life.

This book has got me thinking about some of my older reading on documentary theory; how truth and fact is played with as a variable in creative processes. For example, Dara Waldron’s book ‘New Nonfiction Film’, more specifically his writing on ‘Close-Up’ by Abbas Kiarostami. Waldron writes about a merging of truth and fiction, a poetic retelling of reality in which the stories of the characters involved, often the people once entangled in that reality, are playing themselves in a technique Waldron described as ‘self as modele’. Film critic Godfrey Cheshire pronounced Close-Up as “neither a documentary nor a drama but a provocative, unconventional merging of the two, a meditation on the perplexities of justice, social inequity, and personal identity that also subtly interrogates the processes and purpose of cinema”.

HAMNET

This idea of the creative treatment of actuality took me down a rabbit hole this week, one that led me into the cinema to watch Hamnet by Chloé Zhao (written by Maggie O'Farrell) for the first time. Watching a film that is based on a novel that is based on historical accounts/some ‘facts’ couldn’t be a better representation of this poetic retelling of reality. What might not be real in relation to what actually happened to William Shakespeare’s family, contributes to the heart-wrenchingly emotional nature of the film. That’s not to say that the reality of his life wasn’t a tragedy as the play was, but what is added in and is a product of imagination makes the story what it is, and what left so many people in tears in the cinema.

This film to me felt like an invitation to delve back into Shakespeare, which to me always felt a little inaccessible at school. The language was challenging and difficult to grasp the meaning when out of the context of a performance, which to me reinforces the idea that Shakespeare was meant to be viewed in theatre, not read and over-analysed on paper as is often the case in schools. Not many films leave you wanting to go straight from the cinema to the theatre, but Hamnet absolutely did.

THE WEEK

To round off, after reading Herzog’s book and learning about his idea of the post-truth age and the “death of the fact”, he illustrates well that facts no longer have the power to settle arguments or anchor our lives. I came across a short column in last weeks issue of The Week titled Down With the Facts written by Frank Skinner.

The idea that we can have better, richer, deeper conversations by leaving the phones out of the room is something I absolutely adore and will be taking that with me throughout the rest of my life. It’s true though, isn’t it? Conversations with friendly debates on topics we aren’t properly informed on are so much more fun when you can’t just immediately Google the answer, it kills the whole conversation and you lose the thrill and humanness of the argument…

Share The Better Part

It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances.

The mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.

OSCAR WILDE, in a letter

I only really learnt recently what is meant by an ‘aesthetic system’. Broadly, it is a structured framework for interpreting, evaluating, and designing the sensory and emotional qualities of objects, environments, or experiences. I interpret this as meaning building the tools to be able to criticise my immediate environment by evaluating it against my own ‘taste’.

All of the experiences we have since we are born are contributing factors in our sense of taste, effectively what we like and don’t like, and what we choose to consume in those years will act as a lens in how we see the world. For example, I have built a collection of essays, films, books, documentaries, and theory that I refer back to constantly that have changed how I think about what I see, how I might tell a story, how I approach experiencing music and even conversations.

One of the issues I have with social media is that it’s too easy to be saturated with stylised content. I quite often feel fatigued after browsing Instagram or Pinterest because I’m being exposed to too many other people’s tastes and it waters down my own. Spotify is another example where you’re exposed to almost too many options and are at the mercy of an algorithm that is guessing what you like and serving it to you in an AI playlist. What I’ve curated below are some examples of what I want to write about on a weekly basis, the media I’ve consumed that week that has inspired me, made me question my own beliefs, or has changed the way I see the world. The most important thing is that I have found these gems as a result of following my sense of curiosity, not by being subjected to what an algorithm thinks I might enjoy.

ESSAYS

1. Susan Sontag

Sontag’s essays are what introduced me to photography theory and breached out of what was before just a visual interest in the discipline. Anyone who has studied a creative subject will have heard her name at some point as she has written about literature, cinema, photography and media, illness, war, human rights, and left-wing politics.

I began by reading On Photography and was suddenly exposed to a rich, detailed discussion that gave me a better understanding of what photography actually is, it transforms reality into portable, consumable images that create distance between ourselves and the content, often diminishing our understanding of the real world. It widened my view of ethics in photography and actually helped me develop a portfolio that got me into art school.

Sontag’s most prolific essays, including On Photography1, can be found for free on the Internet Archive.2 I re-read a good section of it this week and felt the same burning desire to make photos again that I did when I first read it, a real sense of yearning to delve back into the tactile practice of film photography and study the gritty work of Diane Arbus or Vivian Maier. Maier’s work always makes me think about the question of whether or not I might still consider making art or images if nobody would ever see them, if the act of doing it is enough without the need for it to be witnessed. She also discusses the definition of ‘good’ art with the spin that it should disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed. A real eye-opener and source of thinking material can be found in these pages.

Thomas Flight - Why AI "Art" Feels So Wrong

The ongoing discussion on whether or not AI generated content can fall into the category of Art was well interrogated by Flight in his essay. I first found his work through his YouTube channel which is almost entirely dedicated to video essays on cinema and film theory, but his Substack was a more recent find, and it has the same rigour and imagination his videos do.

I have quite strong opinions on AI as someone who grew up without it but has witnessed the flood of artificial slop it has created in the last few years. I was perhaps the last cohort of university students that wrote their thesis without using generative AI, who had to gather information the old-fashioned way and tear their hair out trying to get Harvard referencing correct.

Interestingly, however, the first major project I worked on at Art School was a film I made in my first year, titled “A Scattering of Objects”, in which I explored the concept of filmmaking as if directed by artificial intelligence. I used a very early form of text generation, most of which was unintelligible, to create a script and outline for the film, and then followed it by creating 3D scans which was stitched together using AI. Finally the script was synthesised using Amazon’s AWS text-to-speech service which was the most human-like voice I could find. I still has a curiosity at this point as to what AI could be used for in art, at this stage , however, it was bing viewed as a tool for the maker, not the maker itself.

Flight also illustrated well in his essay that authentic art, like that of Edward Hopper’s painting, contain a sense of mystery which is otherwise omitted in computer generated images:

Artificial intelligence, currently, is trained on data that already exists, whether that’s images or code or text, and as a result ‘it’ has no way of seeing, it has no means of processing what is unique to biological thinkers: emotion. All it is doing is making a prediction based on what it has been trained on, on what you are expecting to see when you write a prompt and is “visualizing consensus found in data and information”. In case the idea of the artist being made redundant by machine, is this pull quote not enough to illustrate the shear void of humanity contained in AI slop?

FILMS

1. Close (2022) MUBI

I only got around to watching this film in the last couple of weeks after having scrolled past it many times on Mubi since it was released. I don’t know why I didn’t watch it sooner, I think in my head I was imagining it being a dialogue-heavy film which would require a high-level of concentration and understanding of the text, sometimes foreign films can lose some of the nuance after being translated into English.

The film captures the warmth of Belgian summer and the feeling of brotherhood and adventure exclusive to the innocence of boyhood friendships. It had such a tactile and sensory nature to it and the sparing use of music helped with that, the director wants you to hear the heavy breathing and long silences at the dinner table, but when the soundtrack creeps back in it’s usually holding the hand of the most devastating scene. Completely moving insight into how homophobia, even when subversive, can tear people to pieces in a search for belonging.

Close is currently still on Mubi here as of 03/26. You can also sign up here and get 30 days for free!

2. Phantom Thread (2017) MUBI

This is the first Daniel Day-Lewis film I’ve watched since I started appreciating cinema. I think a lot of us have seen clips of him in There Will Be Blood where he screams ‘I’ve abandoned my child’ with quite a chilling delivery, and while his role as Reynolds Woodcock the designer isn’t quite as dramatic, it was still such a captivating performance.

I’ve gotten really into these slower films recently, the ones that don’t over explain the plot for people that are on their phones while watching, and give extra attention to the beautiful details often missed. In this instance it was making dresses, or preparing food, another example of music used sparingly and to help with building tension.

The music composed by Jonny Greenwood is used exclusively thorughout the film and is as much of a treat as the cinematography. It reminds of another film, as an honourable mention, called The Taste of Things, about a chef living with another former chef/critic, in which almost nothing happens in terms of narrative but there are long and tangible scenes of food preparation in which the actors actually seem to be doing the cooking. Both of these films left me feeling culturally enriched and dying to spend more time in the kitchen. I’ve embedded the Mubi podcast episode on the Taste of Things which goes into rich details of the film.

BOOKS

1. The Death of Ivan Ilyich - Leo Tolstoy

My first Tolstoy read. Dark, gritty, and a good test of reading endurance and delayed gratification. I actually had to sit and break the story down after I finished it and read some analyses online to get some perspective on it, and to make sure I hadn’t missed something. I chose to read it because it was supposed to be an incredibly transformative read, and I struggled to grasp how while reading it, but upon reflection it was a metaphor for social standards at the time (late 1800’s), living in parallel to what was de rigeur, fashionable and expected, abandoning selfish pursuits of happiness and instead chasing salary and remaining in high regards with friends.

It is surprising how something written such a long time ago can still resonate, and although I wouldn’t consider myself to be going down the same path as Ivan Ilyich, it doesn’t hurt to remind myself how not to live, where not to waste time, appreciating smaller things in life outside of material gain.

This is the first book I’ve finished in a while. I’ve been picking something up and finding it boring, or too depressing, and so it’s odd that I read it through in a few days. Since finishing it I picked up a few new books from various charity shops that have rekindled my interest in art theory, or at least art writers. The first is The Dubliners by James Joyce, which is apparently also Cillian Murphy’s favourite novel, the second is Unquiet by Linn Ullmann, a conversational piece about the “shifting moods between women and men over a lifetime of making art”. Thirdly was Smiling in Slow Motion by Derek Jarman which is actually the last extract from his diaries and my introduction to his work, so I might be starting at the wrong end. Very excited to crack into these and get the same surging of inspiration I got from reading Just Kids for the first time.

2. Only Dull People are Brilliant at Breakfast - Oscar Wilde

This is more of reference book of pithy quotes from Wilde, rather than something to sit and read, but it was worth mentioning both for its comic value and wisdom. Some of my favourites that I’ve kept highlighted are:

• “We can have in life but one great experience at best, and the secret of life is to reproduce that experience as often as possible.”

• “Prayer must never be answered: if it is, it ceases to be prayer and becomes correspondence.”

• “Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope.”

• “Every single work of art is the fulfilment of a prophecy: for every work of art is the conversion of an idea into an image.”

• “Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man’s original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion.”

I haven’t read much of his work but I think this might be a good starting point to get stuck in.

You Should Keep a Commonplace Book (& how)

This video essay is such a good introduction to new journalling/documentary methods. It’s a practice that provides the space to write about what inspires you, a non-specific place for note taking on creative experiments, thoughts on articles throughout the day, as a method for a better understanding of self.

“I talk about commonplace books and why you should keep one! or a journal or a notebook. Anywhere you can write down ideas and thoughts and inspiration which isn't dedicated to one specific topic or subject matter. anything goes in the commonplace book. Learn about yourself and what you are inspired by, become more creative and follow your interests to their ends”

I’ve got a fascination with taking notes on things, and seeing into an artist’s notebooks is like seeing into their mind. I got the chance to see the Wes Anderson Archive at the Design Museum in London where quite a large quantity of his notes and drawings were on display, genuinely more exciting than seeing the Fantastic Mr Fox models.

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It feels weird to say I have a connection to trees but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t. From boyhood to now I still find myself taking photos of them and studying them and how they sit in their environment. They feel like a symbol of strength, resilience, and in a life eternally changing, they remain planted. When you sit nestled among their roots and you feel the creaking of the twisting trunk, the wind gives them the energy to sing to you. If they could speak to us they would tell stories of travellers long gone that found respite in their shade. Perhaps drawing them is a way of preserving that short interaction and one day I might tell my story through the trees I’ve found shelter under.

If I had to scrutinise the real reason I’ve always been drawn to the arts, whether that be writing stories, photography, drawing trees, or even performing arts for a while, I would trace it all back to a sense of curiosity. I’ve never been a big talker but would liken myself more to an observer, someone who can sit and just take the world in, as many artists are. I had a habit of walking off as a child, not running away, but led astray by smells or noise. I’ve maintained this approach to life all through my worldly adventures. In India, for example, it was rare I would leave my hostel in the morning with a plan. The only exception to this would be if I was travelling with others, but most of the time I would pick a direction and allow the day to direct itself. It isn’t always an easy way to live though, I feel more often that I would care to admit like a rudderless boat, navigating by instinct alone and hoping fulfilment finds me, which it often does.

The curiosity that has led me into all the adventure I’ve had so far, some almost killing me, is also the broken compass that makes finding a direction in life so difficult. There is a certain reassurance in studying trees as it proves that not all things great are on the move, and that it’s ok to remain still, thoughtful, and observant in times of unsteadiness. There are certain things that we have control of. To a certain extent we choose what we spend our days doing, what we eat, watch, wear, listen to, but there are some things that we don’t control. I didn’t choose the attributes I was born with. I didn’t choose to be creative or to be terrible at maths, learning kinaesthetically was forced upon me genetically and I choose to play the hand I was dealt.

The most interesting people I have ever met and the people I still consider friends years after meeting are those who have the same sense of curiosity.

1. Blackbird Coffee,

   63B P. Lãn Ông, Hàng Bồ

In terms of quality of coffee this is absolutely the best place I’ve found in Hanoi, but it’s more than the drinks that make this the best spot for me. You’ll find this shop on a street lined with spice traders that spill out onto the pavement. The air is filled with the aromas of lemongrass, garlic, ginger, coriander, and mint, so the approach along the short block shaded with Blackboard trees is a full sensory experience. I’m no expert on aromatics and its relationship to taste, but drinking a silky and floral cappuccino immediately after walking through a spice market is everything I imagine a coffee roaster wants you to experience when drinking their coffee. On one occasion I ordered a cappuccino and the cinnamon roll that came toasted with a side of lemon cream. The inside is Blackbird is warmly lit and comfortable enough to sit in for an hour or so.

2. Ikigai

   43 Ng. 38 P. Phương Mai, Kim Liên

Another spot for specialty coffee, but again, not the reason I chose to go. This spot appeared on Google while I was trying to find a fairly residential area that wasn’t dressed up for the tourist-gaze that I could aimlessly walk around for a while and then return from on foot. I resonated with the name, a Japanese word that translates roughly to ‘a reason for being’, an intersection of what you love, what the world needs, what you’re good at, and what you can be paid for in finding a purpose in life that is as fulfilling as possible. It was more good fortune than planning that it happened to be an excellent coffee shop, but the location is the main attraction. From the front window I had a view into the quiet street running along a lake. Ladies in conical leaf hats swing their bikes loaded with Lychee and sweets around the corner into the shady alley. A real local’s spot, I felt weirdly that I was intruding, but the staff were warm nonetheless and the walk back through the narrow streets and green parks made this a favourite.

3. Binh Minh Jazz Club

   1 Tràng Tiền, Phan Chu Trinh

My first few nights in Hanoi, unfortunately, took me through Beer Street at least once. It’s inevitable, it’s a rite of passage to the Hanoi experience, and makes the process of discovering the rest of the city far more enjoyable as you can only really go up from there, and I was left craving real music after having my eardrums hounded by ket donk. I used to frequent Jazz events while living in Birmingham and missed it once I had moved out, and so seeing that Hanoi has its own scene was exciting. I didn’t spend nearly enough time in Binh Minh, I arrived towards the end of the evening when intermissions had become longer and more frequent, so I left after the set I’d walked in on and after I’d finished my flat gin and tonic, but the music and venue were exactly what I’d wanted. It had everything you’d expect from a Jazz Club, slightly foggy, dim lighting, a small bar with a neon under-glow, and a spotlit stage for the musicians. This might be a unique experience, but there are moments in live jazz where you close your eyes and you are transported back to when you were a child in the back of your parents car, driving late, the blue of the night split by orange street lamps that seemed to pulse as you drove past them, and some late night Miles Davis on the radio quiet. It’s a dream-like state, almost a liminal space, falling asleep but not quite there, not quite awake. That’s how I felt at the height of the set.

4. VULAB Specialty Coffee

   30B Xóm Hà Hồi, Trần Hưng Đạo

I found this spot completely by chance. I had returned to this particular area in an effort to find something exactly like this, a place tucked away, sheltered from the sun but not disconnected from it entirely, and with excellent drinks. I found VULAB after catching the chemex logo on their sign at the entrance to a narrow side passage. The tiled floor and the carefully placed plants gave this cafe a sense of careful curation, and similarly to Ikigai is far enough away from the Old Quarter to avoid the majority of the tourist crowds. I’d liken the experience of watching the baristas making coffee to that of meticulously following a scientific formula, exact measurements, timings, filling the air with the rich and perfumed scent of high-altitude ground beans. Watching these people who have mastered their craft reminds me of what I enjoy about making coffee at home, it’s the process as much as the result. I am totally engrossed in the formula, which usually takes 20 minutes with the manual equipment I use. It’s not efficient but so rewarding.

5. Non Coffe

   4 P. Hàng Nón, Hàng Gai

The final spot is less about what the venue offers on their menu, but more the space it occupies above the busy streets. I was returning from a long walk from one of Hanoi’s bustling flea markets, I was hot and just wanted to get off the road and into some cooler air for a beer. Approaching the cafe along the street towards its entrance, you actually can’t spot the roof terrace, it is hidden behind the sign advertising the balcony. The rooftop is gently nestled in the treetops, a slight breeze enough to cool off after being amongst the humidity of ground level, and provides a view down onto the streets. If it wasn’t for the heat, you could easily imagine yourself being in a similar setting in Paris, up high, lead rooftops, and Juliet balconies covered in terracotta flowerpots. This spot is absolutely best enjoyed at dusk while there is still light, and just enough time to enjoy the transition to darkness and the warm lights to be turned on.

Here are a couple of honourable mentions to add to this list that serve some top notch Vietnamese classics that are absolutely worth visiting.

• C.O.C Legacy Specialty Coffee - For the best egg or coconut coffees in the Old Quarter.

• Dream Beans Coffee Roastery - For coffee roasted in-house, great spot to sit and stare out of the window on the first floor.

• Đồng Bào Cafe - Coffee was ok, nothing to write home about, but it was at the other end of Chợ Giời flea market which is worth a walk around.

This collection of cafe’s, bars, and spots for walking are what I’ve found to provide a balance of urban beauty to be explored and enjoyed on foot, as well as a selection of places to sit and think and observe while enjoying some of the best coffee on offer, some of the best I’ve had in the world. While travelling India previously, I was always craving good specialty coffee where tea just wouldn’t scratch the itch, but it can be found in abundance all over Vietnam, some of the finest options concentrated within Hanoi. Now I crave what home offers: delicious and affordable wine, and good cheese.

I’ve always found my own creative practice deeply ambiguous in that I’ve never once been able to define exactly what it is that I do. Even throughout art school in Birmingham I was surrounded by specialists, people who were connected at root level to their mediums and would happily spend hours making riso prints or welding steel structures, and yet I hid behind the loose and washy term ‘multi-disciplinary artist’ and while in conversation would list every creative alleyway I’d walked. I don’t speak negatively of multi-disciplinary artists as I know plethora that have found success in the broad arrays of the arts, and they know exactly how to use each of these crafts to answer the questions in their heads and produce beautiful and coherent bodies of work.

I never studied art seriously until undergraduate level, I sketched, took photos, painted (terribly), and took great pleasure in reading theory; the likes of Susan Sontag, John Berger, and books on Alienation in the arts or colour theory. I didn’t particularly enjoy the subject at school because it was only ever really practice based, painting was never fun as I couldn’t get the colours correct, collage was tedious and messy, ceramics was too delicate for my schoolboy bullishness, and yet here I am in exactly the same position where I feel dissociated from the photographs I’ve been making. My work isn’t coherent at all, I’m too far away from subjects and so the images look nice but are too easy, and finding my digital camera repulsively synthetic even with 50 year old glass on the body.

I’ve been collecting ephemera in some form or another since I was about 19, post cards, receipts, entry tickets for gigs or coasters from bars around the world. To me, this is a form of documentation, an act of remembrance that doesn’t rely strictly on image making. It’s a private act of journalling in which once every few months I will take the wallet filled with stained bits of paper and cardboard, and will spread them out on the floor and wallow in the same sense whimsy and self-satisfaction I felt at the time I swiped the objects from bar tops and hotel foyers. I enjoy the fleeting nature of ephemeral things, a receipt that you ask for and have no use for or intention to ever look at again that is inevitably balled up and binned, or my ticket to enter the Le Corbusier museum in Chandigarh. Somewhat poetically I compare holding onto these non-objects as a defiance against forgetting the boring yet pleasant small-acts that make up my days, they’re like tangible fragments of a memory that prove that something happened.

I usually feel bad for leaving my camera at home when I leave for a walk, especially where I am now in Vietnam, somewhere I had high photographic ambitions for. I have to remind myself that I’m not being paid to take photographs, I have no obligation, it’s an enjoyable thing. I document my surroundings in alternative methods like journalling where I might describe not just the visual surroundings, but how my other senses are engaged, the temperature, smell, how uncomfortable the seat is I’m on etc, things that are omitted from a photograph.

I was reading another Substack post this morning by Isaac Rangaswami about a shop in South East London that sells records, tapes, and ephemera from decades past. In the interview with the owners they say “I think hindsight is so useful when determining what speaks of the era and actually it's hard to map what is important as it's happening.” In context, he is referring to how they don’t stock new things and that they are first and foremost a “nostalgia shop”, and that what they stock as ephemera always seems culturally significant in some manner, in my own interpretation. I thought this was interesting because none of what they stock would have been objectively interesting when it was made, most of it was impermanent by design, created to be destroyed, and yet someone, people, kept it alive all these years and appreciated it as a form of documentation that allows us now to see what life was like without the sensationalist hindsights of Hollywood cinema or major artworks. In some ways that’s what I’m doing, creating a paper trail of my life. Instead of a set of highly curated photographs, it’s paper, tickets, receipts, as well as scraps of artworks made as a generalist artist.

Going back to my feelings on being ‘multi-disciplinary’, I have found some comfort and relief in that being an artist doesn’t have to be a career in the traditional sense as you’re told in art school. What the training you receive can provide you with is a set of tools that allows you to properly document your life. That’s what being an artist is at the end of the day, you’re interpreting the world. I love the idea of bringing all of these collections together one day, scanning them in and producing a small book telling stories from around the world, another creative project to start and never finish.

I really struggle with the concept of memory, mostly because I’m aware that we can only ever experience what is happening exactly in this moment, and once that moment has passed it becomes, in sorts, a figment of imagination. The experience immediately becomes subject to the creative treatment of memory, it is watered down by mental images and keyframes of what we saw. Photographs help mitigate this degradation, they help to preserve the fidelity of a moment, and yet they only tell a part of the story. At the end of our lives, if we are lucky to have our memories intact, we are the product of our experiences, which makes me feel better about the impermanence of the present moment. Collecting ephemera is like stealing something physical from time which is intrinsically abstract, they become tools for telling stories and trap a moments sensory qualities. The beer mat that smells like old varnished wood, a drawing on the back of a receipt, or a page of notes soaked in coffee that still holds the scent of the cafe it came from.

I remember reading Just Kids by Patti Smith for the first time a few years ago and finding that as the chapters flew by, I had been naturally curating a list of further reading in the form of post-it notes, dog ears, and highlights. By the end the list was full of poetry she had mentioned, records she had listened to with Robert Mapplethorpe, films, and art works to look at. Her references to Frank O’Hara and Kenneth Koch are how I then began reading the book about the New York School of Poetry titled “The New Avant Garde”, and from that I felt as though I had built a mental map of New York without ever having visited. It was the same process after reading Robert Greene’s 48 Laws of Power (described pejoratively by some as ‘alpha-male coded’), and I remember being fixated by the way he introduced further reading by linking it to historical events. It felt natural, I wanted to pursue these extra-curricular endeavours. In some ways, social media in the form of all content platforms (think YouTube, Instagram etc), is the next evolution of what these writers do in their literature, but, for me, I am left feeling burnt out and overwhelmed by choice.

This sensation is comparable to that of standing in a book shop and staring at the shelves ten feet high, a thousand spines staring back at you. Poems you may never read, recipes you may never cook, places you may never visit. A million lives lived, writers that have left their hand print on a cave wall saying “I was here, this is my story”. I want nothing more than to read them all.

When we are linked to one another digitally as we are now, naturally occurring are endless lists of what to read next—’here are ten films that will break your heart’, ‘here are 20 recipes that my nonna used to make’ etc. My saved section on Instagram is bloating with recommendations beyond the point of comprehension. The immediacy and readiness of digital culture prioritises dramatic titles and enduring constant evolution to grab your attention rather than valuing substance and credibility. The list of what to consume next grows exponentially the longer you spend on these digital platforms, and although it feels so good to save another indie film to watch this weekend, the best thing you can do is to stop taking suggestions. Here is a breakdown of what I believe to be a better process for enjoying nice things:

1. Cut the suggestions off at the source.

   1. You are being bombarded with inspiration through various online outlets. Remove yourself from them, and work with what you’ve already got written down or saved.

2. Categorise the items you want to consume.

   1. This will be books, films, food, restaurants, cafes, and places. Add to the categories as you like, but make them make sense to you.

3. Keep your list short.

   1. Ten items is plenty to have at one time, and employ a one in one out rule.

4. Carve out time during the week for these nice things.

   1. This takes time to do. If you have dedicated gaps during the week that you can fill with creative consumption you’ll be able to really enjoy those things. I’ve started going month by month and having a completely new list at the end.

5. Write about what you have learnt and experienced.

   1. A review of the film you just watched, a paragraph on how the book you’ve finished made you feel, or write in detail the atmosphere of the restaurant you ate in. Writing by hand really makes the words stick, and by evaluating what you’ve consumed you intrinsically build a deeper relationship with it.

If you decide that stepping away from social media completely, then it might be worth reading about The Slow Media movement. This group advocates for changing the pace at which we consume and produce media to allow a more expressive and eloquent method of production and consumption. I’ve been finding more comfort recently in the fact that I can never in this lifetime read everything and see everything, but I can make more of what I have read and experienced. The following quote, while contextually slightly different, is by Albert Camus and reads:

Working through a monthly list of curated forms of media is digestible and anything but overwhelming, and you conclude the month with a deeper understanding of what you’ve consumed. You’re a vessel of rich details and knowledge, ready for more meaningful conversations on the things you love.

My final addition to this conversation is that there should always be a couple of items on your list that are outside of your comfort zone, something you’d never read or listen to or watched. This is the perfect way to branch out into new interests, and the further reading collected from them are infinitely valuable and help to challenge your own beliefs. It’s too easy now to become a product of what you consume and a dogmatist without realising it. To throw one more quote out there:

I remember falling in love with this country. I left in a hurry from Kathmandu as a mysterious virus chased me down a mountain and onto the last flight home. I couldn’t help feeling like my time here was incomplete. My love for image making was forged in this country, where I had refined my style, found a way to translate my vision into a composition and tell my story.

Above is one of the first photos I have taken in quite some years that I was happy with. These are the kind of interactions you can never force, they just happen to you. A rickshaw driver asked if he could stop at his home for a couple of minutes before continuing the journey, and his children were playing outside while we were stopped.

Now I have returned, if only for 30 days, and once again have the chance to wander the streets of Delhi, Rajasthan, and Himachal Pradesh in search of new experiences and to be at the mercy of the most intense country in the world, but most importantly to begin making images once again.

My journey started in New Delhi at 3AM. I had booked a concerningly cheap hotel near the airport, about a 15 minute drive away. I wouldn’t normally sleep in hotels, especially in unfamiliar lands, but seeing as my journey was taking me from Manchester to Istanbul, to Kuwait, to Dubai, and then Delhi, I was anticipating an extreme disturbance in my sleep schedule and wanted to get my head on a pillow as soon as I could after landing. My first mistake of the morning was exiting the airport with only 1600 rupees in my pocket, about £14. The taxi man took 1100 of that, even after I haggled him down, leaving me with a crisp 500 note, enough to cover the 400 rupees for the room, and leaving enough for a tuktuk to an atm the next morning. What I hadn’t planned for was the taxi driver demanding a generous tip towards the end of the ride.

I held back a response until I knew I was within sights of the hotel, and my god was it a sight. Not only was the hotel not what I was expecting from the photographs online, but it was significantly worse. Looking out of the taxi window I saw a long foyer lit dimly with white fluorescent tubes, an exterior better suited to a post-apocalyptic film, and two blokes at the reception desk looking anything but amused at my arrival. This is where I had to awkwardly explain to the taxi driver that I had nothing for him other than 3 Kuwaiti Dinar in my pocket, actually equivalent to about £8, but seeing coins he was more insulted at the offering than anything. He followed me into the hotel towards the reception where I began checking in.

"Have a booking, sir?”, the younger of the two men at reception asked, barely hearing him over the whirring fans above our heads. I gave them my details for the booking, even handing my phone over to show them the confirmation, but the grumpy, now glowering, man behind the desk was adamant there was no booking under my name. Great.

I pleaded that there must be a free room for me to sleep in, which it happened there was, but at double the price. Now 800 rupees is still absurdly cheap for a hotel room regardless of where you are, but I was now 300 rupees in debt to the hotel. I was led upstairs and into the room, another white lit box with damp walls, holes in the bed sheets, and a ceiling fan gyrating alarmingly above the bed, but thankfully a working air conditioner. I took the WiFi password down from the younger man, as well as a bottle of water, and decided to try and get some kip in the limited remaining hours before checkout at 10AM, now only 6 hours away. Cue 6 hours of relentless shifting around and anxiety driven state of alert like nothing I’ve ever felt.

At this point all I could think about was how I was going to pay my way out of this hotel with less than what I owed and nothing to pay for a taxi out of in what felt like the worst street on earth. The round faced and unimpressed man downstairs assured me that there were many ATM’s in proximity to the hotel, however I was seeing one within walking distance on Google Maps. Unfortunately this knowledge was not enough to sooth the sense of impending doom I was feeling, and I continued to roll around wide awake until the sun started rising.

I got up at 9AM to sneak out past reception to see if this ATM was going to save me or not, and walked for about 5 minutes along the busy street all while being offered shoe polish, asked for loose coins by children, and nearly stepping in several piles of cow shit. I was in luck. I stood in that little air conditioned room with the sound of notes flicking into a wedge ready for me to remove from the machine. Annoyingly, once I was paid up at reception and back in the room to collect my bag, I felt totally relaxed and ready for bed…

I made quick use of the WiFi while I had it and called for an Uber to collect me and take me to a hostel further into the city. The 15 minute drive from the airport cost 10 times more than my taxi from the airport, and was 4 times shorter a distance, was prepaid, and air conditioned! I arrived outside the hostel after a drive through the chaos, hauled my tired bones up the stairs into reception, and checked in. I dumped my bag into the locker, kicked off my boots, and collapsed shutting my eyes instantly. I was asleep for about 4 hours before my stomach woke me up rumbling. I hadn’t eaten since Kuwait 15 hours prior.

I stiffly walked down the stairs of the hostel and onto the porch of the entrance, hands on hips, looking side to side to see if there was a restaurant within reach, but even more delightful was a chai waala directly next door. This was the first cup of this wonderfully sweet and spiced milk tea since I was last in India, and never have I been so relieved to part with 7 pence. I walked for ten minutes, unconvinced by the offerings of the street vendors. Pani puri, chaat, katchuri, chapatis and masala, all delicious foods at the right moment, what I was really craving however was an aloo paratha with curd. My prayers were not answered, and I returned to the hostel untriumhpant, stomach still growling.

It wasn’t until an hour or two later that I made it out for food. A Chilean guy called Alvaro entered my dorm and chucked his bag down at the foot of his bed. He was one of those instantly likeable people, totally opens you up and offers his friendship without conditions. It took no more than 5 minutes before we agreed to walk down the street in search of food together, ending up in a charming little restaurant where we ate thali and egg biryani. Alvaro and I would then travel together for the next week exploring some of India’s most beautiful cities.

My last night in Delhi. The last evening before departing for Jaipur on the train. I had spent the morning and afternoon with a group of people from all over the world, Austria, Australia, Netherlands, Chile. We had been to see the stunning Akshardham Temple and the following 3 hours were spent chasing air conditioning, Delhi was HOT. We ended up at a science museum stuck in the 80s, filled with outdated and broken installations, very odd but we were sufficiently cooled. Then, back to the hostel for a shower and a quick rest before finding somewhere for drinks. An hour had passed, we gathered the troops, and went on a mission to find some beers.

The local bottle shops were only a 10 minute walk, and we arrived promptly after playing frogger on the busy main road. There were two shops next to one another, the first I knew didn’t sell beers, the second did, but as we passed the first there was a loud sound of glass breaking. I turned quickly to see a man sprawled out on the ground surrounded by shards of green glass. His eyes instantly began rolling back into his head as the floor became a dark shade of red. He was having a seizure. In that moment people had crowded around him, we had to keep walking as it became dense with people. I had acknowledged that someone had fallen and looked to be seriously injured, but we ordered our drinks and walked back the way we came. As we turned back, the crowd was carrying the man out of the shop by his flaccid limbs, blood soaked into his clothes. As we got closer, we could see he had been leant against the wall by the shop, chest resting still, eyes shut. He was dead.

It wasn’t until I had returned to the hostel up the road that I thought about my CPR training, and that I might have been able to do something, but with the police already there and seemingly unbothered by the sudden mortality of his people, I can’t imagine intervening was the best option. These are just some of the random scenes of Indian streets, where I believe life can seem cheap and impermanent. And thus concludes my first 24 hours in India. It was like watching a lifetime in a day, I’ve seen newborns, kids in the street, men going to work, old fellas serving chai, and then the end of someone else’s life.