so, this is where we live. lucy exits building. leaving home is somewhat of an ordeal, a kinda necessary one though. there's 713 locks on the door. each is more complicated than the previous. so if we forget something, we have to go back into the hallway, up the narrow staircase, and re-open the locks, sequentially, like a series of firewalls in the nsa database.
this has happened with a decreasing frequency but a continued actuality.
this photo will hopefully be the last instance of said event.
it's impossible not to have a compulsion, like a sort of nervous flinch, to snap a few obligatory 'this-is-a-canal' type of tourist souvenir images. it's like the camera is a vacuum box. you aim it at the environmental scene in which you find yourself. not the best smelling part of the area, which might be over near a flower box perhaps. not the best sounding part of the area, which may, for example, be closer to the water where you can hear it lapping at the edge of the canal. just the best 'look'. you aim the camera and you suck in that instant in time.
all the light coming from the sun, hitting the objects around you, bouncing off them and then being sucked into the lens of your magic box and bang. it can be revisited in the future and shared with other eyeballs.
coz we're still out of time zone equilibrium we have been getting up very early. venturing out into town, around 9am, the temperature is about 5 degrees. there's a weirdly powerful wind going around and it is, for bodies only recently in 40 degree weather, rather freezing. this is pretty much our perpetual facial expression around amsterdam town. we look silly. but people are nice to us.
this character is sitting outside, on one of the canals, in a coffeeshop. that is one scary dude to meet, especially after you just smoked half a dozen organic cannabis cigarettes and decided to step outside to have a breath of fresh air.
luckily this wasn't the case for us. it was 9am and we were on our way to the jordaan district to check out the vibe there. we just noticed this spooky motherfucker watching us from the other side of the canal.
fun thing to do - get a menu and try to figure it out. it's kind of a good way to get a grip on some of the language. downside - you end up just looking at the pattern of the letters, the weird combinations of sounds that they evoke and so you get distracted and end up trying to make some sort of photo art out of it.
occupational hazard perhaps.
humans have developed technological extensions for our mind. we've outsourced some of our memory database storage to microprocessors made out of sand and metal. housed inside glass, metal and plastic. these microprocessors store files for a library of our past experiences. parts of those experiences, anyway.
it's important to still store a full 'actual' life memory in your brain too. then you get both memories. and it helps to compensate for the fact that the memory files of the magic box are visual-'heavy' and don't include sounds, smells and other sensory stimulations that come with being there in actuality. an amalgamation of senses that more fully connect you to time and place.
it takes a while to get used to the traffic variations. the roads look different. there are bike lanes, as if each street is actually a dual-lane freeway, one lane for bikes, one for cars. scooters ride in bike lanes. fast. cars look different - as in, there are different brands, and therefore different shapes. it kinda messes with the template road safety default setting in your mind. it forces you to pay attention, look around all the time.
this dude is infinitely helpful. check out how much concentration he demonstrates, just to press the button. that's his real message. concentrate.
love.
him.
there's always cultural differences. you never know if people are rude or whether they just have different customs and you have to get used to it. personal space is one. it's way less than what we're used to. but you know that we live in a culture with space. with backyards. with parks. with fences between houses. the people in this city almost all live in apartments, all sleeping within 5 metres of their neighbours. the city has small streets, small shops. spacial relations with the other humans is more acceptably intimate.
service speed is another. but again, we come from a culture of rather hard driven competitive capitalist and consumerist economies. businesses must demonstrate sleek efficiencies to keep costs low, maintain a strong margin (which means keep a good gap between what you spend and what you receive), and ensure no other business comes along and does things better and attract your customers away.
but we're in amsterdam. a city famed for its chilled atmosphere. after all, there's people smoking joints in little old cafe shops, while eating toasties and playing scrabble. most inner-city streets are pedestrian only and this creates an actual physical awareness of slower movement. human speed movement. consciously or not, walking around streets with 1 tonne machinery, made of steel, rubber and plastic, driving past us at speeds faster than we can physically move ourselves, creates an environment of dynamic energy that sets us into more anxious alertness.
so, back to the image at hand - this is a sculpture i made out of coasters when waiting an hour for a toastie. a fucking sandwich. an hour.
we should have heeded the subliminal message in the coasters themselves. the red and white patterning is the 'no-entry' symbol.
and there's 2 in the sculpture. we both should not have entered the premises.
a lucy amsterdam invention. dam good. haha!
but seriously. cooks like a genius.
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