- Ramblings of the Bearded One -

Somewhere to store them

2012-02-25T00:05:00.000Z

I have numerous notebooks and an even greater number of scraps of paper with thoughts and ideas scribbled on them. Each collection of words hastily written in case I forgot them; desperately recorded to remind me later of that moment of insight.

Some of them are barely a few words; some are a few paragraphs; some are quotes that created an explosion in my head when I read them; some were written 20 years ago; some were written more recently; some are more or less complete; most are starting points waiting to be fleshed out and developed.

Unfortunately, they induce a sense of guilty responsibility. I can't throw them out - each one was written with the hope and expectation it would prove useful - and yet, they pile up, cluttering desktops, shelves and any number of random spaces.

But with all that's been going on in my life recently, I feel a need to offload them.

My solution is to place them online - probably one a day on average - so I can search through them with ease if I want to, without having to trawl through semi-legible scribbles in an assortment of piles.

Whether I ever will is less important than the feeling that I could, should the fancy take me.

So a week ago, I put together a new blog called "Somewhere to store them"

Feel free to have a nose around, and if anything here triggers ideas for you, then good for you. Probably. Unless you have the same problem as me...

What is different about Mickel Therapy? Part 3

2012-02-16T12:16:00.000Z

In Part 1 I talked about the misconception of the separation between mind and body. In Part 2 I wrote about how that misconception leads us to respond in ways that will reinforce rather than help the condition, and that what we need to do is start listening to what our body is telling us and change our responses. In this post, I thought I would outline the impact taking this approach has had on my illness.

One of the key things to understand about Mickel Therapy (MT), is it is a system. Results come from understanding how the system works, applying, and committing to it.

In this respect, it’s remarkably similar to losing weight (for those who don’t know, 7 years ago I used to be around 90lbs heavier). Short-term, quick fixes rarely work in the long term, and might even be counter productive. It’s known, for example, that 95-98% of all diets fail – that is, within 2 to 3 years the dieter has put back on all the weight they lost, and in many cases more. In order to sustain the weight loss, you have to shift from thinking about diets and move to thinking about a lifelong commitment to healthy eating. If you choose to eat healthily, and stick with it, then weight loss becomes an inevitable side effect.

But behind eating healthily, you have to first understand why you have been overeating in the first place – addressing not just habits, but your emotional relationship with food becomes crucial if you ever going to be able to make sustainable changes.

Nor is it a matter of blind faith or belief. Of course, if you don’t believe eating healthily will help, then you’ll never be able to commit to it, and keep doing it through times when you would kill for [insert craving of choice].

So MT is a system where you learn how to become aware of what your body and emotions are up to; you learn how to accept what you are feeling and place it in an appropriate context; and you learn how to change your actions so you are no longer fighting, but working with your body and primal emotional states.

On one level, you could say you are learning to become authentic. And this can have a profound effect on your entire system.

In this way, you could just as easily commit to Buddhist principles to achieve the same end. The 4 Noble Truths give you a starting point, and the 8-fold path is a system, which will bring about balance and authenticity. Again, no belief in anything mystical is actually required. And if the commitment is there to the system, over time, the brain actually rewires itself (click here for a 4-minute interview with the Buddhist Matthieu Ricard on a BBC News radio programme, after his brain was scanned by MRI machines).

So as I see it, at the core of how something like MT can work are 2 fundamental ideas. The first is the mistaken notion that the mind is a separate entity to the body - and the traditional sense of the conscious mind as being the “real” self and the primary authority – is dangerously naïve (as described in the previous posts). The second is the understanding of the plasticity of the brain – how we respond and how we act lay down and reinforce connections and pathways – and if we change our understandings and actions, then we can rewire aspects of the brain.

It is not passive, and it is not necessarily easy. Many of our thought patterns and responses are so embedded we are not even aware of them. But part of the system of MT helps to identify them. As time moves on, and we establish new ways of interacting with our bodies, minds, and the world around us, many of the symptoms begin to reduce in their severity and may disappear altogether.

Over the past 6 months I have learned all sorts of things about myself – how I think, how I react, and the unseen, unchallenged pathways I follow by default. Despite the fact I thought I was pretty self aware already, the reality is we all have multiple blind spots.

And our biggest blind spots are usually hidden in plainest sight. In fact, it’s not uncommon for our biggest areas of self-sabotage to be hidden smack bang in the middle of what we perceive to be our greatest strengths.

Nearly 6 years ago, when the term CFS started to be mentioned by the doctor I was seeing, my good blogging friend Carole said, in her opinion my problem was TMB – too much brain. I was constantly thinking of anything and everything, pulling it apart and reassembling it in a multitude of ways. She expressed surprise that I couldn’t see I was probably exhausting myself with that amount of cranial activity.

Of course I laughed and dismissed it. My problem solving abilities were one of my most powerful strengths. Now, though, I’ve come to realise that on some levels, she was right (Carole, you can say you told me so, but only once – OK?).

Regardless of what triggered my condition, my investment in the authority of my fast and agile thoughts was now playing against me. In a brain primed for fight-or-flight responses, grabbing hold of any thoughts that flittered across my consciousness and trying to solve them, was now a dangerous thing to do.

And as I became increasingly tired, so I tried even harder to “solve” this mystery illness – analysing aspects of my life, looking for traumatic episodes, searching for patterns. Far from helping me, this activity helped to embed the pathways that were assisting in my decline.

As the Mickel Therapy got underway, this realisation was one of those epiphany moments for me – it’s when I wrote the post Who’s in Charge.

I understood that one the primary strategies I had to develop was to learn let go of trying to solve everything that came into my head; to stop constantly ruminating and continually gnawing away at thoughts.

And the best tools for this are Mindfulness and Meditation.

In essence, the basic approach is to be in the moment, rather than mulling over the past or the future – each time you find your mind digging its claws into some thought, you gently release it and return your attention to whatever you are doing.

For a couple of years I’d been forcing myself to go for a walk every morning, but 10 minutes was my absolute limit. If I went to 11, it was like the plug was pulled out and exhaustion would overwhelm me.

Back then, I barely noticed what my body was up to - during my walk I would be absorbed in whatever was most prominent in my mind. Now I practice being Mindful. I pull myself back to the present, to the now, whenever I realise my mind has wandered off again. I feel the wind on my face and the pavement beneath my feet; I listen to the sounds of the birds, trees, passing cars. I try and experience being completely in the walk, ideally without much thought at all.

Every afternoon, instead of going to bed, I now meditate for half an hour, focusing on my breathing. Each time my mind wanders off, I gently bring it back to my breathing.

Every day I practice 10 to 15 minutes of Tai Chi, trying as best I can to be completely in the movement, feeling the body, the air and the flow – gently bringing my mind back to the movement each time I realise it has wandered off.

Along with starting to learn how to listen to my body and emotions, these things have had a profound effect.

I now happily go for a 20 minute walk every day, sometimes longer, sometimes heading out to the shops as well – and I’m not exhausted. If I do a lot of walking in one day, I might get a bit tired, but then part of that is I’m not particularly fit, having not been able to exercise for over 5 years.

I no longer have to worry about what will happen if I’m not home by 2pm to be able to sleep during the afternoon.

I no longer live in fear of the Fatigue.

Can I say with certainty that MT will work for everyone? No. As I said at the outset of these posts, I am not a medical doctor/researcher, nor I am not a trained Mickel Therapist - this is just my interpretation of MT. However, despite some of the fears I have read on various sites, I am convinced it cannot harm – how can becoming more in tune with yourself make things worse?

Am I completely cured? No. Quite apart from the fact I feel “cure” is a misleading word - it implies returning to a previous state of being, whereas I feel I’m creating a new way of being - the reality is there are still some symptoms that make themselves felt. As I said before, this is not a quick fix, and it is less than 6 months since I began the MT. But I am considerably improved on where I was – far more than I could possibly have hoped for at the outset – and can see how I will continue to improve as I continue to apply what I have learned.

What alternative would I recommend if for you MT is not possible (or desirable) for whatever reason? Zen Buddhism. And I’m quite serious about that.

Meg turns 14

2012-02-14T23:43:00.001Z

Our little Valentine’s baby turned 14 today, slightly wary at leaving the comfort of 13 behind, but a bit excited too. And wondering when we’re going to let her have her own Facebook account…

In the 2nd half of the morning, as Maggie was busy creating a heart-shaped, gluten-free chocolate birthday cake, Meg, Rogan and I went for a walk down at Rascarrel Bay.

After drinking the hot chocolate Maggie had made up in a flask for us, I thought I’d take a photo of the 2 of them.

The fact that it was easy – no fuss, no complaints, no pulling faces at each other (or me) – was not because they are used to me carrying a camera. Quite simply it’s because they get on well together. Meg adores her big brother and Rogan is incredibly patient with his little sister – far more than I ever was with mine.

When I think how much I used to fight with my brother and sister when we were kids, it astounds me how little trouble we have with the two of them.

Some days, and this is one of them, I can’t help but feel a very proud Dad.

What is different about Mickel Therapy? Part 2

2012-02-11T00:01:00.000Z

In the last post, What is different about Mickel Therapy? Part 1, I talked of the misconception of the separation between mind and body.

If we think instead of the conscious mind as being just one aspect of a wider whole that goes into making up who we are – which includes physical needs, instincts, primal emotions and subconscious desires – then it helps us to avoid many of the problems thrown up by the simplistic mind/body separation model.

Whatever the initial trigger for the ME/CFS might have been, according to MT (Mickel Therapy) and other mid-brain based theories, those with this and related conditions are now dealing with the result of a part of the brain no longer properly regulating certain hormone and chemical signals to the rest of the body.

The question plaguing the ME/CFS and medical communities has been what to do about it. The 2 leading recommended treatments are GET (Graded Exercise Therapy) and CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy).

GET works on the idea that you establish an energy baseline – understand what you can do physically in any one day – then slowly but steadily increase your activity levels and train yourself to get fitter. Some claim this has helped, but for many it doesn’t, and for some it can actually make them worse, as the body is already exhausted so making it work even harder just increases the fatigue and damage.

CBT looks at the impact negative thoughts can have on your mood. In brief, you learn strategies to catch your negative thinking patterns and change them. The idea is over time you should you learn to develop a more positive outlook and feel better about yourself and the world. The medical profession admit this is not a cure for ME/CFS, but do recommend it as a useful coping mechanism for dealing with a long term, chronic condition.

Mickel Therapy, on the other hand, comes at the problem pretty much from the opposite end to CBT: rather than try and use the conscious mind to change the emotions, MT is about learning to listen to the body and emotions and then change your actions.

With regard to ME/CFS and related conditions, the MT view of symptoms – muscle & joint pains, anxiety, depression, brain fog, IBS, fatigue etc – is that the body is trying to communicate with the conscious mind, but is not being listened to.

The older, more primal areas of the mind and body do not communicate in language – that is the preserve of the conscious mind only. So when we hear a loud bang, we jump and our heart starts racing; when a loved one leaves, we feel a sense of loss; when we sit on a pin, we feel a stab of pain. These are all instructions from the body and other parts of the brain to take some kind of survival action – in these cases, run away from danger, connect with others so we are not alone (and thus vulnerable to predators), or pull the pin out of our arse to avoid blood loss and/or infection.

But what would happen if we ignored these signals? What if, instead of standing up and removing the pin, we decided to distract ourselves from the pain by watching a DVD, or try and dull it down with painkillers? The body can’t literally say, “Excuse me mate, but this situation really isn’t very good for us, you know, so will you please remove that bloody pin!” All it can do is make the pain worse and through feelings of discomfort try and let us know we should do something about it.

Symptoms, then, are signposts to something being wrong. If we respond to them appropriately, they will ease off, because they are no longer necessary.

But in our culture, we are taught to override and suppress uncomfortable symptoms or “bad” emotions – ignore them, pretend they don’t exist, cover them up with food/alcohol/sex/shopping/gambling/anti-depressants/insert medication of choice. And part of this comes down to the delusion that the conscious mind is the authority in charge that should be giving the instructions to the body and primal emotions.

So instead of listening, and working with the brain and body to constructively deal with the symptoms, our conscious minds set about overriding them.

Our culture is also selling us distractions in the name of solutions – the consumer society makes us feel inadequate so we will buy more, bigger and newer, in order to make ourselves feel better. And we are surrounded by newspapers, TV and Facebook alerts, triggering feelings of fear, outrage, panic and righteous indignation, dozens of times every day. Generating these responses in us sells papers, keep us tuned in and makes sure we “share” with all our online friends.

This, then, is a problem for most people, but if your brain has now got the fight-or-flight gateway firmly wedged open, then it’s disastrous. Not only is the system already primed, it is being bombarded with further triggers, which are then being assisted by the conscious mind - thinking it is in charge and leading the fight in completely the wrong direction. Rather than tackling the symptoms, we are now reinforcing them.

So in contrast with drug or psychotherapies, the approach of MT is to start monitoring the symptoms – and instead of trying to cover them up or instruct them to be otherwise, we need to be looking for the clues they are trying to offer.

What were we doing when they appeared or got worse? How did we respond to them? And how might we change our response in a way that satisfied our body rather than overruled it?

And it doesn’t just have to be the obvious big stuff that impacts on us. Many of the triggers can be small and seemingly insignificant, so we brush them aside rather than deal with them.

At this point, an example would probably be a good idea. So let’s pick a trivial one like being the only one in the house who doesn’t squeeze the toothpaste tube in the middle.

Every time everyone else cleans their teeth, they squeeze from the middle or the top of the tube, so every time I go to clean my teeth, I have to push the toothpaste up from the bottom as there’s not enough left at the top for me to get any toothpaste out. Is it a big deal in the larger scale of life, with wars, famines, global financial meltdowns? Well, of course not. It’s what you might call a 1/10 issue. But, my response could be a 5/10 or on a really bad day, 8/10 – I HAVE TOLD EVERYONE ABOUT THIS A MILLION BLOODY TIMES! I AM FED UP WITH NOT BEING TAKEN SERIOUSLY!!! – it is not the problem itself, but the injustice or unfairness it represents.

But to make such a huge fuss about a toothpaste tube would seem so stupid, so I won’t react, I won’t do anything, because I don’t want to appear petty and trivial.

So every time I go to clean my teeth, I get the emotional kick in the gut, but do nothing about it. And the pathways in the brain get reinforced.

There’s a definition of madness, which is continually doing the same thing, yet somehow expecting different results. Or as another old saying puts it, “If you keep doing what you’re doing, you’ll keep getting what you’re getting.”

With the example of the toothpaste tube, I keep expecting that either other people will finally see the wisdom in squeezing from the bottom, or I’ll stop being bothered about it. But as my behaviour never changes, neither does the situation, nor my reactions. Each time I clean my teeth, the pathways become more deeply embedded.

The solution, then, it to look for other ways to respond. Perhaps I’ll write instructions on where to squeeze the tube, on the mirror, in toothpaste – it might get everyone’s attention. Or maybe I just buy my own toothpaste tube and keep it on a shelf out of reach of everyone else. It might require a bit of trial and error, but if I keep looking for alternatives until I find one, then sooner or later I will come across a solution whereby I no longer get the feeling of injustice and unfairness.

Now I’m not saying that toothpastes tubes caused, or kept me in my Fatigue. I’m using it as an example of how there can be hundreds of minor things throughout the day where our immediate reaction is disproportionate to the event. And when you have a brain primed for fight-or-flight responses – where the gateway is jammed open and stress will exaggerate all your symptoms – then the accumulative effect, day in day out, will make either make the condition worse, or at the very least, impede recovery.

So the approach of Mickel Therapy is to start observing your symptoms and your reactions – your thoughts and emotions. The idea is to look for your underlying feelings – what is the core emotion you are feeling when the symptoms increase their intensity?

If you can identify the core emotions behind the symptoms and find a way to acknowledge and deal with them in a positive manner, then what begins to happen is the symptoms start to ease off. So by learning how to listen and respond to what’s going on at deeper levels, and stop your conscious mind leaping in and scuppering everything, you can effectively start to rewire your brain’s stress response mechanisms.

This approach, then, is not as simple as taking a pill or sitting and telling a sympathetic soul all your problems. It requires making a fundamental shift in your understanding of who you are and how you are interacting with yourself and the world. And then it requires learning, and applying, new skills, new ways of being.

As I said at the end of the TV programme, it's not a cure, as a cure implies returning to our previous self. This is about constructing a new version of who we are - one who understands the conscious mind is a useful part of the whole, but is certainly not the one in charge.

These posts have turned out to be much longer than I anticipated, so I’ll stop here, and Part 3 will be about how I have applied these principles to my own condition and found myself much improved.

What is different about Mickel Therapy? Part 1

2012-02-10T00:01:00.000Z

I was recently on a TV programme – Trusadh – about ME/CFS [links to Part 1 and Part 2 on YouTube]. The relevance of my contribution lay in the fact I was doing a course of Mickel Therapy – a controversial treatment with many people claiming improvement and even cure, although it is not recognised by the NHS nor the ME Association.

However, while the programme was very good at highlighting both what it is like to live with ME/CFS, and the difficulty and diversity of opinion in identifying and tackling this debilitating condition, it didn’t give any real sense of what Mickel Therapy (MT) is. I’ve since seen plenty of comments left on different discussion sites where its clear many have been left with the impression it is just another version of CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) or psychotherapy, which it is not.

So I thought, having been through and benefited from MT I would give my interpretation of why it has had an impact on me, and what separates it from these other treatments.

At this point, I need to offer a disclaimer – I am not a medical doctor/researcher, and I am not a trained Mickel Therapist. These writings are entirely my own opinion and are not endorsed by anyone with a stake in what I say.

What I do have is a degree in philosophy – which could be said to be a 4 year training course on Bullshit Detection - and I have spent well over 5 years of my life crippled by fatigue and related symptoms, which no one in the medical profession was able to adequately explain or do anything about. Since going through a course of Mickel Therapy, my energy levels are much improved and I can see a path towards further recovery.

Much of the controversy of MT stems from it being a “talking therapy”, as opposed to a physical or drug based therapy, and the idea that words alone might be able to affect a physical condition can seem nonsensical. Indeed, it seems to imply the illness is “all in the mind” or, at worst, even a false illness belief.

So was I not really ill, responding to some kind of placebo effect, being conned or outright lying about my condition? Well, obviously I don’t subscribe to any of those theories, so what has been going on then?

In order for it to make any sense, we first have to break down some commonly held assumptions – the biggest being the mind is a separate entity from the body, and is in charge of what’s going on.

If you have this belief, then there are other assumptions that follow. You might think, for example, that you could compare the mind and body with software (the programming) and hardware (the physical components) of a computer. So if your computer stops working, you first have to figure out whether it is a hardware or software problem. Is it that the Windows Vista has corrupt files or a virus so can no longer boot up, or has the keyboard broken or the motherboard fried – in which case no amount of software changes are going to make any difference – the hardware needs to be physically fixed or replaced.

Bring this analogy back to humans, and if there is something wrong with the body, it needs to be physically fixed – you can’t talk a broken leg into healing itself.

But, how accurate is this model of human beings?

At this point, rather than doubling the length of this post, I would ask you to read a previous post of mine – Who’s In Charge, which outlines the mistaken idea that the conscious mind is somehow the primary authority that needs to be obeyed.

The point being, that once we start really thinking about it, the separation between mind and body is fuzzy at best. Most of what we think of as independent conscious thought has been driven by subconscious desires, habituated thought patterns and bodily functions. If you doubt this, see how long you avoid going to the toilet before it occupies your conscious thoughts so completely, you are utterly unable to think of anything else.

Our conscious thoughts are not the start of any action, they are the result of a whole mass of stuff going on in the body and brain before we become aware of them. Our thoughts can, of course, affect our emotions and vice versa, and even create feedback loops, which intensifies both, but they are rarely the starting point.

Can physical traumas affect the mind? Can mental states affect the body? Absolutely yes in both cases. To draw a hard line between the 2 is simplistic and naïve. However, if we think about them as different aspects of the same thing, different members of the same team, different faces of the same whole, then we open ourselves up to other approaches.

For example, each time we are in a stressful situation and our body goes into fight-or-flight mode, the brain activates a whole pile of chemicals and hormones to enable us to deal more effectively with the threat. Our heart rate increases, pumping more energy to our muscles, our senses heighten, and even our digestive system slows down as resources are diverted elsewhere. We have a very physical response. And once we perceive the danger to have passed, we start to calm down and the alarms are switched off.

Several theories are now pointing at the idea of mid-brain activity being at the heart of ME, CFS, Fibromyalgia and other fatigue and auto-immune conditions. The notion being put forward is that instead of switching off once the danger has passed, the flood of instructions keep coming. But the fight-or-flight response was designed to be temporary, not permanent, and consequently the person can end up with an array of symptoms, from fatigue to muscle pain to IBS as the body and immune system steadily wears itself out.

What causes the gate to be jammed open is unknown, but viruses and stress are the top runners. But whatever the initial trigger, according to MT, our relationship with our thoughts, emotions and more primal areas of our brain, are the key to rebalancing the system.

But this is not about using the conscious mind to instruct the body what to do, which is the approach of CBT and various psychotherapies. Indeed, trying to “will” yourself better can actually make your condition worse.

In part 2 I will go into more detail about this

Love Against Death

2012-02-04T20:19:00.000Z

In the post this morning I received a copy of Love Against Death, the new album by blues/acoustic singer-songwriter Sean Taylor – even though it’s not due for release for another 8 weeks.

It’s not a pirate copy, but a complimentary one as the cover and internal photos are ones I took of Sean when he played at the Mill Sessions in Gatehouse of Fleet about this time last year.

It was the middle of winter and dark outside. I was given a large empty room, but I only had one studio light with me, and I had about half an hour before he had to be downstairs for his performance. I switched off the overhead lights and shot by illumination of the single light, creating stark shadows and a deep moody atmosphere.

Fortunately for me Sean was less self-conscious than most people I photograph, which meant I was able to get several shots I was really pleased with. I edited the best 3, put them on my blog and sent him copies. I was delighted when he started using them as his Facebook profile pics.

About 3 months ago I was contacted by Sean’s manager, Stuart, saying they wanted to use my photos on the new album. Over the past couple of years, Sean’s profile has been on the rise as he’s played at major festivals and made various radio appearances. Stuart has high hopes this will be the breakthrough album to propel Sean to a much wider audience.

It’s a great album. My personal favourite is track 10, Coal Not Dole.

The rest of the world won’t be able to buy the album until March 26th – 12 months to the day after the TUC ‘March for an Alternative’ protest, when hundreds of thousands of people united on the streets of London against the government’s austerity measures and in support of a fairer society.

The first song on the album, Stand Up, is about this protest – here’s the video for it

He's booked to play at the Mill Sessions again this May - I'm really looking forward to it.

Farewell old friend

2012-02-02T10:25:00.000Z

One of my oldest blogging pals, Charlie, passed away yesterday.

I've heard it said you can measure the Internet in doggy years - it moves at about 7 times the rate of the rest of the world. If this is true, then I knew Charlie for over 40 years.

I never met him in person - the Atlantic Ocean kind of got in the way - but it didn't stop me counting him as one of my closer friends in life.

A few years back I wrote this description of him:

Although I've never met him in person, my image of him is a wild haired, unshaven guy wearing an old dressing gown, sitting on a doorstep smoking a fag while winking at any women walking past. Periodically the resident of the house, a tall man in a black cloak carrying a scythe, stops to ask if he's ready to come in yet. Charlie thinks for a moment, glances through the door then says, "Maybe in a minute," before lighting another fag off the stub of the one he's just finishing.

Of course by this time he'd not smoked for some time. However, the emphysema had already settled in and he knew his time was limited.

For 6 years he'd been telling me he was on his way out. Over 3 years ago he told me he'd been given only a year to live, if he survived the winter. 18 months back he was rushed into hospital and we were all convinced this was it - I even had a condolences card at the ready - but in the end I had to score it out and scribble "get well soon" on instead.

I became so used to the idea of him sitting on death's door, without actually going in, I was beginning to think it might never happen - that 20 years from now he'd still be telling me it wouldn't be long now, and I'd beat him to it.

Charlie's intelligence, wit and humour was to be found in all his writings, but his compassion was to be felt behind the scenes.

Like everyone, we've had times of difficulty where blogging about it just wasn't an option. Longer term readers of this blog will occasionally have come across hints of things, but with Charlie I was able to pour it all out in emails, knowing he'd be non-judgmental and be able to offer clear insights, or supportive words when you need them the most.

Partly because of his condition, his blogging was always a bit sporadic. He would go through long periods of time where not a word was typed. Indeed on at least 2 occasions he deleted his entire blog - usually just after I'd mentioned on this one that his was a blog worth visiting.

During these gaps I would begin to wonder if the worst had happened and would eventually prod him with an email just to see if he was still with us. He began to refer to these as the "are you dead yet?" emails, which seemed to amuse him no end.

Unfortunately I can't send him any more of those.

Charlie, I hope you've finally found the peace you desired.

Miss you, my friend.

ME and CFS - is one more real than the other?

2012-01-31T18:03:00.000Z

Part 2 of Trusadh, the Gaelic programme about ME/CFS was on BBC Alba last night, and can be watched on BBC iPlayer here - http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01b1z0l - for the next week or so, maybe longer. If I find a YouTube upload for it, I'll leave a link in the comments for those outwith the UK.

Sometime soon I'll write more about how Mickel Therapy has managed to improve the quality of my life where other things have failed.

However, during the past week or so, following the first programme, I've become more aware of the debates within the ME/CFS communities, and some of the hostile attitudes towards Mickel Therapy. What I wasn't quite prepared for was the strongly held opinion by some that ME is a real illness but CFS somehow is not.

When I was approached to be in the programme - Trusadh, on BBC Alba - about ME/CFS (see ME, me and Gaelic TV), I was told Mickel Therapy is controversial – that it is not accepted as a valid treatment by either the NHS or the ME Association, but there is a lot of anecdotal evidence with plenty of people claiming significant levels of improvement or even complete cure.

When I looked up Mickel Therapy online, there were many prepared to say Dr Mickel was just a money-making charlatan and that at best, those who recovered were probably responding to some kind of placebo effect.

And I have to say, when I read Dr Mickel’s book, I wasn’t overly reassured – some of the concepts are poorly explained and it can sound at times like it’s bordering on some kind of mystical practice.

Having been through the therapy sessions, I can happily say there is nothing mystical about it. It doesn’t require leaps of faith, dodgy beliefs, pills, potions, magical symbols or crystals being placed under the pillow.

What it does require is a shift in your narrative – your understanding of how you interact with your thoughts and emotions, and changing how you respond to life’s little (and not so little) irritations and upsets.

It comes under the category of “talking therapy”, which distinguishes it from physical or drug-based therapies. For many, however, the idea a set of words could possibly have an impact on a physical ailment sounds like something out of Harry Potter, not the medical world. It seems nonsensical.

But then in our culture, we are often given to believe there is a huge separation between body and mind. One is physical, the other mental and each has its own set of illnesses, which have to be treated physically or psychologically according to which they are.

And yet, how separate are they? Can one not affect the other? Supposing you suffer from shingles, which is made worse when you get stressed – is that a physical or a mental condition? If you can learn techniques to calm your mind so the shingles attacks lessen or disappear, does that mean it wasn’t real, or that it was all in the mind?

The boundaries between body and mind are far less distinct than we generally believe.

But this idea of separation is unquestioned by many, and I think this is what leads to the belief that Mickel Therapy and others like it either it can’t be a “real” treatment, or it can’t possibly work on “real” illnesses – leading to what I have read many people say - if it works, you couldn’t have been properly ill in the first place.

The ignorance, and arrogance, of that position is to my mind the most controversial aspect of it all. It seems there are plenty of people around who wish to place their life-debilitating illness in a hierarchical superior position to other life-debilitating illnesses (my illness is more “real” than yours – or mine is physical, whereas yours is “just” mental).

Within the ME/CFS world, there are many who get upset that ME (Myalgic Encephalomyelitis ) appears to have been “downgraded” to be encompassed under the CFS (Chronic Fatigue Syndrome) banner. This or that study is quoted to show that ME is a separate condition.

Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. I’m not a doctor or researcher. I use the label CFS or ME (or whatever combination) because that’s the label the doctor gave me. All it ever meant to me was, “We accept you suffer debilitating tiredness, but we don’t know why, or what can be done about it. CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy), GET (Graded Exercise Therapy) and even anti-depressants help some people to varying degrees. We can arrange them for you, but if they don’t work then we don’t have any other answers, so you’ll just have to go away and live with it.”

Maybe I have ME; maybe I have CFS; maybe I have something entirely different. All I do know is the symptoms have been horrible to live with and the idea that they might never ever go away has felt appalling. To have lived nearly 6 years with depleted energy levels, brain fog and virtually no emotional reserves, and with the prospect of no end, has not been fun to say the least.

Now the Mickel Therapy has had a significant effect on me. I might not be 100%, but I am much improved and I now have a system, a path, which is highly likely to improve me further in time and stop me relapsing.

This means, instead of having to write off the rest of my life, I now have hope again.

But I find it astounding, irritating and not a little sad, that there are people who want to say that if Mickel Therapy has worked on me, then somehow I wasn’t really ill, or my illness was “less-than” theirs.

I can fully understand anyone not wanting to be misdiagnosed (I have this condition and you are saying I have that condition and are treating me for that, but it won’t work on this), but doesn’t mean their illness is more “real” than the one they think theirs is being mistaken for, and it is incredibly insulting to say that it is. Yet I frequently seem to come up against this attitude.

I can understand it comes out of frustration, but do they not see the irony in the fact they have fought so hard to say their condition should not be treated as less-than, when they are prepared to dismiss someone else’s condition as such?

It matters not if you have ME, CFS, Depression, OCD, MS, or any other illness – if it is debilitating and impacting on your life, then you deserve help and support. If an illness is devastating your life, then hierarchies about what counts as more important, or more “real” are a nonsense.

ME, me, and Gaelic TV

2012-01-28T01:07:00.000Z

On Monday past I was on the telly. On Monday coming I will be again in the second of a 2-part programme about CFS/ME and the controversial treatment, Mickel Therapy.

It began last summer when I was contacted by a researcher for TV production company, Mac TV, who had discovered my blog and some of my writings about CFS/ME and wondered if I spoke Gaelic. I said I didn’t, but would be interested in being kept informed about the programme they were planning.

I can only guess they were struggling to find enough people who a) had CFS/ME, b) spoke Gaelic, and c) were prepared to have a TV camera stuck under their nose while they were followed through a treatment not sanctioned by the ME Association, because they got back in contact to ask if I’d be up for being involved in the programme.

Towards the end of August I was visited and interviewed by the director, Robbie, and filmed talking about the effect CFS/ME had had on me over the past 5 years.

The filming process is distinctly odd on a number of levels, not least the fact they need to shoot quite a bit of other footage than just the interview bit. They also need to film all the cutaway shots – one of which involved me going for a walk up the street with a camera stuck to a metal frame attached to my shoulder, so it stayed in a fixed position in relation to my face, which it was pointing at. So as I moved about, my head appears to remain in place and the background constantly shifts.

The next thing to film was my first meeting with Dr Mickel, the guy behind the controversial treatment. He’s usually based up in Elgin, in the north of Scotland, so this meeting was arranged in a hotel just outside Glasgow.

Subsequent sessions with Dr Mickel were done via Skype, and in mid-November, Robbie returned with Douglas the cameraman to interview me about what impact the sessions had had on my condition.

Originally it was only going to be one programme, but as there were several other people with CFS/ME being interviewed, as well as the head of the ME Association, Dr Mickel and a few others, they felt a one hour programme wouldn’t do it justice, so put together two. Although personally I think they could have easily made a 10-part series.

Part 1 was about what the effects of CFS/ME are, and what it’s like to live with it – from dealing with doctors to the impact it has on those around you.

Part 2 will be following a couple of us through Dr Mickel’s treatment and the controversy surrounding it.

For a limited time (possibly only until Monday), episode 1 is available on BBC iplayer here.

It is mostly in Gaelic with English subtitles, apart from the input of Dr Shepherd of the ME Association, an ME sufferer from Edinburgh, the wife of another ME sufferer and, of course, me.

I had thought they might put up Gaelic subtitles when I was talking, but apparently everyone in Scotland who speaks Gaelic, also speaks English, so they don’t bother.

Unfortunately, access to the programme is limited outwith the UK, and I’m not allowed to upload it to YouTube for copyright reasons.

I would urge anyone to watch it if they can - not because I'm in it, but because it does give a very real sense of what it's like to live with the condition. I found the interviews with a retired policeman who's had it for 20 years, absolutely heart-wrenching.

Part 2 of the programme, Trusadh, is being shown at 9pm on Monday 30th January on BBC Alba, after which I’ll write a bit more about how I got on with Mickel Therapy and the impact it’s had on my CFS/ME

Burns Suppers

2012-01-25T20:12:00.000Z

The 25th of January is Burns Night – when Scotland, and many around the world of Scottish descent, celebrate the birth of the nation’s poet, Robert Burns.

The traditional meal for the occasion is haggis, neeps (turnips) and tatties (potatoes).

In our household this evening there were 4 different variations being served between the 6 of us.

My stepson, Rory, who’s currently staying with us for a wee while, had the real thing – a proper haggis made of sheep’s heart, lungs and liver wrapped up in a stomach lining – which he bought from a local butcher.

Maggie and my stepdaughter, Holly, are both vegetarian so went for a Macsween’s Vegetarian Haggis.

Unfortunately neither real nor veggie haggis tend to be gluten free, so both were out for Meg. Maggie made up a nut-roast mix for her, using gluten free breadcrumbs in the ingredients.

I joined Meg for this as I find haggis to be quite vile, and the veggie option I’ve not been able to face since we bought about 20 of them in the reduced-to-clear section of the supermarket one year and effectively OD’d on them in the weeks following.

Rogan had a pizza.

I wonder how reflective this is of mealtimes across Scotland these days, and what The Bard might have made of it all…

Rory's haggis, neeps and tatties, with a bit of onion gravy

The Challenge of the Self Portrait

2012-01-20T17:01:00.000Z

Last year I was asked by The Stewartry Camera Club to give a talk to their members about Portrait Photography. It seemed to go down well and I was asked back this year to talk about self-portraits and to set a competition, which I did on Wednesday.

In some ways, self-portraits can be seen as one of the most challenging forms of photography for most photographers, because there are significant obstacles to overcome on 2 levels.

The first is to do with the technical difficulties in getting the exposure, composition and focus right when you can’t actually look through the lens – at least if you want to avoid the cliché of just standing in front of the mirror with your camera in front of your face.

Cliché number 1

So you have to try and get everything set up then either set the timer, run round, get into place and adopt the right posture and expression before the camera goes click, or you need something like a cable or remote release that allows you to trigger the shutter from a distance – at least if you want to avoid the other cliché of holding the camera at arms length and just pointing it at you.

Cliché number 2

However, in many ways the far bigger challenge is in deciding how you wish to portray yourself to the world.

It’s one thing for other people to take your photo – it is their interpretation of you in that moment. But if you are taking it yourself, you have to make the final decision about how you want to appear. Intelligent? Sexy? Cool?

However, the problem with trying to look cool, for example, takes us back to those dilemmas from our teens. Cool people seem to be effortlessly cool. People trying to be cool are inherently un-cool. So how do you make yourself look cool without looking like you’re trying to make yourself look cool? The risk of ridicule if you get it wrong is gut-knotting.

Trying too hard

The reality is that while most people are wary about having their photo taken in case they look awful, most photographers feel this even more intensely. Indeed, for many, one of the primary advantages of holding the camera is precisely so you don’t have to be in the image. So to tell an audience of camera club members that I wanted them to turn the device on themselves was never going to be an easy sell.

However, I did my best to try and fill them with enthusiasm for the idea, primarily pushing the notion of photography as storytelling. It can be like having your own dressing up box – you can pretend to be whomever you want.

And once you move away from the suggestion that it has to be some kind of accurate representation, and into the idea of performance and play, then the possibilities for creativity and fun open up massively.

I don’t know how many will enter the competition. I know it will push almost all of them completely out of their comfort zone, but I feel the experience of doing it will be all the more rewarding because of that.

In about 3 weeks I’ll be given the submissions to look through and judge, and in the 2nd half of February, I’ll be going back to announce the winners.

Although anyone who is brave enough to overcome their reluctance and actually enter is already a winner in my eyes.

And if you have 5 minutes to spare, below is a video about the making of the Lavazza (coffee) 2012 Calendar, where they asked 12 famous photographers to create self-portraits. Each had a very different take on the concept.

The LAVAZZERS 2012 from Eugenio Recuenco on Vimeo.

2011 in Photographs

2012-01-09T14:24:00.000Z

It seems that once something has been done 2 years in a row, it becomes a tradition. So I thought I'd better keep up with the tradition established with 2009 in photographs and continued with 2010 in photographs, with a collection of images reflecting the past 12 months with my camera.

As always, feel free to click on the images for larger versions

January - Uncky Rogan

When I was a teenager, I was extremely awkward with small children - I had no idea what to do with them. My son, Rogan, on the other hand, is a natural. Kids love him, and he's brilliant with them. When the grandchildren came to stay at the beginning of the year, I took a series of photos of Rogan with Cormac, the youngest of them. I just love the warmth and connection that oozes out of this image

February - Sean Taylor at The Mill Sessions

One of the more successful projects of 2011 was becoming involved with The Mill Sessions. The Mill on the Fleet decided to use one of its galleries as an intimate venue for musicians (it only has space for about 50 people in the audience) , and I came on board to photograph the main acts before their performance. The idea is to build up a Hall of Fame for the Mill, but it has also been a chance for me to photograph some great musicians, some of whom could well be big names in the future. Sean Taylor certainly fits that description - his blues singing and guitar work blew everyone away when he played back at the beginning of the year.

March - Scottish Tattoo Convention

When a friend of mine told me he was mates with the organisers of the Scottish Tattoo Convention being held in Edinburgh, and could get me and Rogan in with press passes if I wanted, it was too good an opportunity to miss. Out in the ordinary world, most people will be a bit cold to the idea of a complete stranger asking to take their photo. But at a place like this, people with tattoos, piercings and amazing hairstyles are used to being looked at and don't think twice about posing for the camera. For a photographer who loves faces, it was a dream come true.

April - Meg with a Dandelion

When I'm looking through the lens of the camera, you can tell when I think I can see something special, because my finger starts clicking more rapidly. With the sunlight behind Meg blowing dandelion seeds, I switched the camera to continuous burst where I can shoot up to 8 frames per second. Before I knew it, I had over 160 photos. This one was my favourite

May - Spring Fling Open Studio Weekend

For 3 days at the end of May, along with around 90 other artists and makers in the area, I opened my studio to the public. To make it a bit more interesting, I decided to photograph anyone who was interested. Usually I like to spend a couple of hours with a client in a portrait session, but for this event I spent only a couple of minutes. Even so, there were times when the queue went out on to the street and I ended up taking over 130 portraits. This one of Colin and Marianne always brings a smile to my face. (You can look through and buy a book of the photos I took that weekend here - Facing The Weekend)

June - Midsummer Music Festival

It's one thing to photograph people in the studio, where I can talk to them, get them to look into the camera and change the lighting and background. But when they are performing on stage I can do none of these things. The skill set of shooting musicians playing live is very different, but also a lot of fun. This one of the singer, Blue, from the band Quirkus, was one I was particularly pleased with.

July - The Wickerman

Trevor Leat and Alex Rigg build giant willow sculptures to be set alight on special occasions, and each year for the past decade they have created 30 to 40 foot high figures to go up in flames at the end of The Wickerman Festival in SW Scotland. If you follow this link you'll find a full set of the images I took of the Building and Burning of The Wickerman.

August - Isle of Skye

The Isle of Skye off the West Coast of Scotland is an astonisingly beautiful place. Yes it rains a lot, and when the wind stops blowing you'll get eaten alive by the midges, but when the sun comes out, it takes your breath away. We had a lovely, well needed week there back in the summer.

September - Wigtown Book Festival

Being selected as the Artist in Residence for the Wigtown Book Festival in September was an amazing experience. Over the 10 days I took in excess of 170 portraits of writers, locals and visitors to the Festival. This time I decided I wanted to avoid smiles, and asked each person to look intensely into the camera. One of my favourite encounters was the actress and comedian, Elaine C. Smith who was intelligent, funny and completely down to earth. When I asked her to glare into the lens she gave me this wonderful stare that would stop anyone in their tracks. 5 seconds later she was laughing again. During the Spring Fling Open Studio event over the first weekend in June later this year, anyone will be able to visit me in Wigtown where I'll be back at the studio I had for the Festival, and all 170+ photos will be pinned to the wall, staring at you

October - Halloween

When creating lanterns for Halloween, I still get a kick out of how easy it is to carve pumpkins rather than the turnips we did as kids.

November - With a Cameraman Over His Shoulder

BBC Alba - the Gaelic speaking Scottish digital TV channel commissioned a programme about CFS/ME. Despite me not speaking a word of Gaelic, somehow I ended up being interviewed and filmed for it (along with several others I should add). So at the point I took this photo, the cameraman in the background was filming me. I don't know whether his shots of that moment will appear in the programme, but it did feel a bit odd having a camera pointed at me while I was pointing it at someone else. I think the programme will be broadcast in a few weeks time, so I'll mention more about it then.

December - Christmas Lights

Self portraits are never easy at the best of times, because you can't look through the lens at the same time the shutter clicks. It's even harder when you're wrapped up in Christmas lights that are plugged in. Still I've rarely shied away from a challenge and I was delighted to get this one published on the site 1x.com.

An annual summary in photos for three years running - definitely a tradition now...

Interview by Conny Wenk

2012-01-03T11:24:00.000Z

One of my favourite photographers, Conny Wenk, has started a new blog series called “25 on Tuesday”.

The idea is to interview creative people she has met over the years (via blogging or real life), and to start off the series I feel rather honoured that she’s chosen me.

So if you’re interested in finding out something I consider to be over rated, or what the last book I read was, then pop over and take a look – 25 on Tuesday: Kim Ayres

However, if you’re not a regular visitor to Conny’s site already, then ignore my post and keep scrolling down to enjoy some of the most wonderful photography on the Internet.

Conny has an immense talent for relating to people and getting the best out of them via her camera. I defy you to spend 10 minutes scrolling through her photos and not end up with a warm smile across your face.

Visit http://connywenk.com/blog/ and add her to your favourites.

Happy New Year!

2012-01-01T19:51:00.000Z

Well, who’d have thought it? We’ve survived another year!

The end of the world was predicted last year by Harold Camping. Twice in fact – after the rapture failed to materialise in May, he said he meant October really. But ultimately he went on to join that great long list of people who’ve been getting it wrong for thousands of years.

According to some interpretations of the Mayan calendar, 21st December 2012 is when the world will end. Other intepretations say it will just be time to flip it over to the next page...

However, the biggest dilemma will be trying to work out whether it’s worth buying Christmas presents or not - obviously it will be pointless getting them if the prediction is true. But if we hold off until that point just to make sure we haven’t wasted our money and the apocalypse fails to materialise, again – well, we’ll have missed most of the deadlines for ordering online.

Hmmm... decisions, decisions...

Meanwhile, whether the world ends this year or not, I hope each and every one of you has a wonderful 2012.

No Bounce

2011-12-29T18:42:00.000Z

As my arse was sinking deeper into the mattress and my knees were becoming level with my shoulders, I began to wonder whether memory-foam had been the best route to go.

After 9 days of waiting, and no less than 3 of them being damaged in delivery (and so having to be returned) our new memory-foam mattress finally arrived last week.

7 nights later and I’m still getting used to it.

We pondered for a long time about what kind of mattress to get, once we’d decided our lumpy, bumpy existing one was probably contributing to our poor sleeping patterns.

After extensive research (lots of Googling), and a recommendation from a friend, we decided we would go for a memory-foam one.

It’s quite different to a traditional sprung mattress. For one thing, it doesn’t bounce when you climb on it. Instead, it slowly moulds itself around you as you sink into it. And when you move position, it gently remoulds itself.

However, while it is certainly comfortable, my body has not yet got used to the lack of springs and for the first few nights I woke up every single time I turned over. Still, the last couple of nights haven’t been quite so bad, so I’m feeling a bit more hopeful.

Which is just as well, because once we’d unpacked it and were happy it wasn’t damaged, we took the old one straight to the dump. So if we change our minds, we’ll be sleeping on wooden slats for as long as it takes to get a new one...

Season's Greetings

2011-12-23T17:30:00.000Z

I don’t know quite what’s happened to my blog writing skills. There was a time when I could turn even the most insignificant event into something worth reading, but these days I’m finding it harder and harder to do.

Even since my post early last week, I’ve started several that just fizzled out – I was unable to lift things out of the mundane.

I’ve wanted to write about the debacle of ordering a new mattress online, where 3 times it was damaged in the delivery, so it wasn’t until the 4th time the company sent it out were we finally able to accept it.

The Solstice should have been a good one to write about, especially as last year it was –10 degrees C and this year it was +10 degrees C.

Christmas decorations, dental appointments, the “Men in sheds” Xmas lunch for the terminally self-employed.

I even had a whole thing about Christmas seeming to be locked in 4 distinct eras – Roman, Victorian, the 1950s and the 1970s.

But for some reason I can’t seem to get the words to flow.

Maybe it will return in the New Year, or perhaps it’s just that my creativity is channelled into photography rather than writing these days. Who knows?

However, one thing I can do at this time of year, as I have for the past 6 years here on this blog, is wish you all the very best for the Festive Season.

I searched through my photo folders looking for suitable seasonal images of snow, tinsel or holly, but in the end the best image I could find was one my daughter Meg made as a Christmas card for us.

If you would like a larger version of it to print off and pin to your mantelpiece, then click on this link and follow the instructions

http://kimayres.co.uk/xmas2011.htm

Hope you have a good time whatever your social, religious or cultural beliefs.

Photographing the Photographers...

2011-12-13T18:52:00.000Z

In one of my biggest challenges yet, a couple of weeks ago I not only had to photograph a group of pro and semi-pro photographers, but I had to be in the shot too.

I recently teamed up with half a dozen other photographers in the area, with the idea to pool resources, expertise and marketing power. The theory is we could help make this area an attractive place for those interested in photography (buying prints or taking workshops) to visit.

It’s early days yet, and the aim is to officially launch next Spring, but things are slowly taking shape. The constitution is written, executive posts filled, bank account opened and the website is under construction.

It was decided it would be useful to have a group photo to go on the website, and to use for publicity purposes once we launch. As portrait photography is my speciality, the responsibility for the photo fell on my shoulders. Inevitably this presented several challenges.

An initial idea of an outside shot of us all against a backdrop of a beautiful Galloway landscape was quickly dismissed. It’s hard enough to negotiate a time and date to suit 7 self-employed people, let alone rely on the weather in Scotland, in winter, to be pleasant. We needed an indoor space large enough to fit everyone plus lighting rigs, and while my wee studio is fine for one or two people – three at a push – it’s not designed for groups.

Fortunately Allan Wright leapt to the rescue and we were able to use his gallery – a large white painted room – after he’d removed his framed prints from one of the walls.

But while composition and lighting are tricky enough, in order to be in the photograph myself, I couldn’t just click when everything was perfect. I had to keep setting the timer then run round to get into position and hope no one was blinking, or looking in the wrong direction, or leaning in front of anyone else, or pulling a silly face.

And when photographing more than about 4 people, crowd control becomes an extra necessary skill...

Even then, it’s one thing to photograph the general public – group shots are usually family gatherings where they expect to follow the instructions of the professional with the camera. But to photograph a bunch of people who make money from their ability to use a camera means the sense of scrutiny is cranked up to the nth degree.

Still, somehow I survived and below are the final images. One where we look very serious and professional, and one where we, er, don't...

As usual, feel free to click on the images for larger versions.

Left to right-ish (click on names for links to their websites):
Morag Paterson and Ted Leeming
Roger Lever
Phil McMenemy
Allan Wright
Kim Ayres
Ian Biggar

A wonderful photo

2011-12-06T12:00:00.000Z

A couple of years ago, I stumbled across an amazing photography site - 1x.com.

I submitted a couple of my best photos, but they were not accepted. I submitted a couple more, and they too were rejected. It turned out they only accept, on average, about 5% of all submissions - and this is from people who are all sending in their best work.

In March 2009, I gained my first publication on the site, but any thought that I was now one of the in-crowd was quickly dispelled, as it was nearly a year before I had my 2nd image accepted there. And even now, I have only managed to get 7 of my photos up on the site.

However, the site is not only an inspiration visually, there are many people willing to share their knowledge and skills. And if you are prepared to put your ego to one side, you can gain a great deal. In fact, I would credit a fair amount of the improvements I've made in my photography over the past 3 years to what I have learned from 1x.com and several of the members.

It's also been a place where I have made several good online friendships - people from around the world who one day I would love to meet up in person - much like many of the fine bloggers who visit these pages.

One such person, is Argentinian-born architect, Nicolas Marino, who likes to go off adventuring on his bicycle in various parts of the world. And one of his favourite places seems to be Tibet.

The photographs he takes are just stunning. They wouldn't look out of place in National Geographic, and I'm constantly nagging him to make a book of them, just so I can buy a copy.

1x.com has been running a competition over the past few months, and the results were just announced on Monday evening, and to my delight, not only did Nico win, but he won it with this photo, which is one of my all time favourites:

Awakening by Nicolas Marino - worth clicking on for a larger version

It was taken early in the morning after he'd spent the night with a nomadic Tibetan family in their tent. In an earlier forum post, he'd written of the encounter:

"One day during the last trip in Tibet, I camped at the end of the day right before a storm, i had camped quite close to a tent where Tibetan nomads, who take care of their yak herds, live. A few minutes after I had got in my tent and started to snow, the man came to look for me and there was no way he would let me stay there alone. He took me in with his lovely family, they all live inside the tent where the floor is wet grass, the mattresses are arranged around the stove, a few boxes with belongings, a lovely poster of the Dalai Lama, and that's about it. Husband, wife, three kids and the dogs, once I got in, it was like being part of the family, we had a very big dinner they cooked for me. They treated me like one of them and when we went to sleep, the man pointed me to my mattress and put a huge pile of warm blankets and arranged them around my face like my dad used to do when I was a kid, just to make sure I'd sleep comfortable. In the morning, other friends from tents around the area would come to visit and to drink tea with us. The saw me leave, they wouldn't stop giving me things to eat."

Congratulations on winning the 1x.com competition, Nico, and I hope that one day you will find yourself in Scotland where you can share some of your tales in front of a log fire with a dram of single malt.

For more of Nico's images on 1x.com, visit his portfolio here:
http://1x.com/artist/nico3d/photos

And for more stunning images to keep you occupied for hours, visit his Flickr site here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nicolasmarino/sets/

Who’s watching who?

2011-12-01T19:56:00.001Z

I much prefer taking photos where the subject is staring straight into the camera. It means the viewer of the photo gets the feeling they are being watched while they look.

In this case, however, a TV cameraman was filming me while I was taking a photo of the director. So the viewer is not only being stared at, but is being filmed too (I’ll explain why they were there in a couple of months – but before you get excited, it’s only a small role in a documentary being made for BBC Alba).

For a bit of extra fun, I overlaid an image of a piece of glass that's been sitting in the garden for several months. Finally, giving it a sepia tint makes the photo look a few decades old rather than the few weeks it actually is.

As usual, feel free to click on the image for a larger version

The Geese at The Mill Sessions

2011-11-27T23:26:00.000Z

The Geese are a local "indie-folk" band, who I’ve photographed on previous occasions. In fact one of my photos graces their first CD, back when they were just a 3-piece band.

They were performing at The Mill Sessions on Friday past, so we needed a photo of them for the collection (see others under the label "Mill Sessions").

My comfort zone is photographing people one at a time. Once numbers start becoming plural, the difficulties multiply exponentially. The more people there are, the more chance one of them will be blinking, looking the wrong way, obscuring someone else or pulling a dodgy face.

Time was limited as there’d been a mix up in communication, and I had far less than I’d have liked, as they had to go and sound check with Marcus, who was recording the session.

The upshot of all this was when I got back home to look at the results, I discovered I didn’t have a single shot where they were all looking at the camera and no one was laughing, moving, or obscuring someone else.

Fortunately over the years I’ve become reasonably adept at using Photoshop so was able to take different heads from different shots and merge them together. This final image, then, is actually an amalgamation of about 4 photos. However, I know from talking to other professional photographers, this kind of thing goes on all the time. At least I wasn’t removing wrinkles or making anyone look slimmer.

Filming proved to be a bit problematic too. I was sitting only 4 or 5 feet in front of them - which is great for an intimate live performance, but not so good trying to fit all the band members into the screen. So I had to have the wide-angle lens on the camera, set at the most extreme I could. Unfortunately, the result of this is everyone’s somewhat distorted.

However, if you can forgive the visuals, this song is one of my favourites, and does give quite a good sense of the style of The Geese. It’s called “Trade Not Aid” and is about a man who is drowning but when he calls for help, the person on the shore who can throw him the lifebelt tells him helping him for free could set up a culture of dependency, so he should trade something for the help instead.

For more info about The Geese, visit their Facebook page here:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Geese/168328679870494

Processes

2011-11-20T00:07:00.001Z

A wave travelling through water is not an object - it is a process. The water it flows through is affected by the energy of the wave, causing it to move up and down, but it doesn’t move along with the wave. If you place a rubber duck, for example, in the path of the wave, it is not swept along with it – it merely rises and falls as the energy wave passes under it. When the wave hits the beach, the water crashes and some of it surges up the sand or pebbles, only to retreat again once the energy has dissipated, not having actually travelled very far.

A flame, likewise is not an object, but a process. We can follow it as it burns down the candle, or even from one candle to another, but it is not a solid, enduring thing. It is a process that moves the atoms around it from one state to another. What makes up the actual fire changes by the moment.

Over a longer time span, it is possible for a ship to have a different plank changed every time it comes into port until there is no longer a single piece of wood remaining from the original construction. We see it as the same ship, as an enduring object, and yet it could easily be said that the ship is a process too, not unlike the wave or the flame. The only difference is the time scale.

In fact, if we had a time-lapse camera sequence long enough, we would see that even mountains, planets and stars are also processes. They rise and fall, are built and consumed, are created and dissipated and the atoms that make them up are constantly changing.

And of course, we are no different.

To think of ourselves as unchanging and permanent is a misconception in the same way as thinking a wave, a table, a mountain or a star is. We only appear to be an object because of the timescale in which we view ourselves. But we are a process as much as a wave or a flame. The cells of our bodies are constantly dying off and renewing. It is reckoned 98% of our cells are replaced at least every year.

I might think I am more or less the same person as I was last year – a little older, a little heavier, a little greyer, but essentially still me – and yet only 2% of me is the same as the person who wrote about photographing The Sex Pistols Experience tribute band 12 months ago.

We are like the wave travelling across the ocean. Even though the atoms that make up the wave change from moment to moment, the energy has a momentum that keeps it moving in a direction until eventually it runs out of steam, or hits something and is dispersed. But while it is moving, it creates the illusion of being an object.

The only real difference is we have gained self-awareness, even if we often mistake what it is we are aware of – falling for the illusion of permanence.
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Beginnings

2011-11-17T09:53:00.001Z

“My mother’s looking after the kids on Saturday evening,” she said, casually dropping it into the conversation, as though her mother would quite often have the children to stay over for no particular reason.

“Perhaps I’ll pop round, if I’m not doing anything else,” he said, trying to appear nonchalant while his mind raced on how he might get out of his sister’s birthday celebrations.

21 years later and Maggie and I recall how this embarrassing exchange led to the start of our relationship.

Happy anniversary, my love x

Animation...

2011-11-11T00:16:00.001Z

I came across a site the other day called "GoAnimate". It allows you to create your own animated sketches by using cartoon characters and converting the text into speech.

At the freebie entry level, you are allowed to create one character of your own from scratch, use a limited selection of backgrounds, and a handful of existing characters. And the time limit for your animation is 2 minutes. If you are prepared to fork out money, you can create more characters, select from a wider array of backgrounds and develop much longer movies.

So here's a sketch I put together using my free character, a basic background and it comes in at just under 2 minutes long.

You'll have guessed I haven't paid for the Pro account yet...

The voices sound a bit stilted - a touch Stephen Hawking - but considering I was able to put this together in a short amount of time on a budget of zero, I'm really quite impressed with the system.

GoAnimate.com: Territorial Markings by kimayres

If for some reason you can't see the video, then click on the link and hopefully it should take you directly to the site
http://goanimate.com/movie/0q3gvQh1JUTA?utm_source=linkshare&uid=0vdhAzJYc_tY

Finding Albert at The Mill Sessions

2011-11-07T09:00:00.000Z

Finding Albert are a rather talented, up and coming band who played at The Mill Sessions last week.

As in previous performances this year (see The Mill Sessions label), I set about photographing the band before the gig started.

Up until now, I’d been photographing people singly, or in pairs, so with Finding Albert being a 4-piece band, it took a bit of shuffling about to fit them all into the shot. There’s also the problem that the more people in a photo, the more chance one of them will be blinking, looking in the wrong direction or getting lost in a shadow cast by one of the others. It took a bit of time, but I got there in the end.

Finding Albert: left to right -
Chris (drums), Rob (vocals and keyboard), Neil (bass), Michael (guitar)

An additional difficulty, however, lay in the fact the summer has now long since passed and it was dark, so there wasn’t the option of photographing outside. And the empty space I’d used in the first 3 Mill Sessions earlier in the year wasn’t empty.

My solution was to bring along a light, a reflector and an extension lead and use the stairwell.

The gig itself was superb. With room only available for 50 to 60 people max, the venue allows a real sense of intimacy. It feels like barely a step up from having a band perform in your living room. Stripped back from their usual big amps, the drummer even used a cajón, as a full drum kit would have over-powered everything else in this smaller space.

As well as the obvious advantage for the audience, for the performers it also feels like playing to a group of friends, creating a mood that is both intimate and relaxed.

Sitting at the front with my camera on my knee, I put on the wide-angle lens so as to fit everyone in at such a close distance. There’s no fancy camera work, but the videos below should give you a flavour of the evening.

Back to Rome

My Friend Jack

For more about Finding Albert, visit their website here:
http://www.findingalbert.com/

or their Facebook page here:
http://www.facebook.com/findingalbert

Suprisingly gentle

2011-11-03T23:26:00.000Z

On a cold, wet and windy autumn day, the clouds briefly part.

Momentarily, a ball of fire a million times larger than the earth and 93 million miles away, gently caresses my skin and brings a smile to my face.