Untitled

Think

Head is all over the place, I can’t think, I can’t think, I cannot think clearly.  Brain no longer feels like soft tissue but instead ossified beyond repair, synapses like a ball of tangled wool irretrievably chaotic with no clear connections, only random thoughts darting uncontrollably inside my skull and skittering off in all directions like a bowl of marbles dropped on a glass floor.  It’s very late, the small hours of the morning, and I should be in bed, not sitting here in front of the computer aimlessly trawling through Facebook, or trying and failing to reply to the many starred emails in my inbox that are querulously demanding my attention with their deal-with-me-now emboldened fonts and yellow stars.  Well they can just bugger off.  I can’t do it anymore, I can’t respond because I can’t concentrate, I can’t focus, it’s too much of a mental effort to try and think in a rational and straightforward manner, when my own head is fighting me every inch of the way.  I can feel my brain starting to panic slightly, to trip over itself in haste and desperate desire just to be able, for once, to THINK CLEARLY, galloping into the state where I get repeated thoughts bullying me, inside my head I am shouting leave me alone I don’t have to do this, you can’t make me, you can’t make me you can’t make me. 

I was so ‘normal’ earlier today.  I went to the post office to collect a packet, I went to the supermarket and picture framers where I engaged in a bit of light banter with people and smiled at them.  I rang my Mum and my Aunt and had a chat with them both.  I burbled affectionate nonsense to my beloved cat and picked him up, hugging his small furry body close to me and loving him and telling him so.  I made a modest supper, not much food, no appetite but pleased with what I ate, watched usual soap operas on television followed by non-serious and entertaining cooking programme.  Came back to the computer and looked at some photography, commented on Facebook and Twitter, made tentative plans with a friend to meet on Friday.  It was all fine – ordinary, non-taxing, not difficult, ordinary. 

Yet during that time there has been a subtle shift in the ether, a change of mental temperature, an invisible burning behind my eyes and a pressure inside my head that is making me see everything slightly differently.  The mental jumble is firing itself up, I feel discombobulated, odd, really odd, a frown is crinkling my brow as I write and try to understand what is happening whilst I type these words with strange disconnected hands that may or may not belong to me.  I hate the way this just comes over me with no warning, when I thought I was doing okay and now suddenly I’m not and I don’t know what to do about it and I don’t want anyone else here and I don’t want to talk about it and I don’t want to feel it or be it I just want it to stop.  Just stop and leave me alone.

 

“Communication” – The Making of this Image

I have been asked by a couple contacts on Flickr about the making of this image, so once again here is a break-down of the different components used, and stage I went through to reach the finished article.

The first stage was to combine a lighter exposure with a darker exposure, so I pasted the lighter layer (which had already had a tone curve applied to increase the contrast slightly) on top of the darker one, then hid this with a layer mask so it looked like this:

I then used a soft fat brush to reveal selective lighter elements hidden beneath:

I added a brightness/contrast adjustment layer to darken parts of the image further, and erased this where I didn’t want it to show. After this, I added a texture layer similar to the one below (can’t recall exactly which one, I have so many!) which was shot in one of the asylums I visited, and blended this using “overlay” mode. I erased most of this so that the texture only showed on the typewriter and a little on the background:

and the result was this:

After this I added a scan of an old phone bill that my great grandmother had squirrelled away, and deleted the white background around it so that this part became transparent:

I blended this using “multiply” and moved it around until the letters and numbers where positioned where I wanted them, and partially erased some of the straight lines over the typewriter:

Finally I added this texture from Jerry Jones and blended it using “soft light”, and erased parts of it where it was too dark:

The finished result was “Communication”. See Flickr for more from Jerry Jones