We’re finally back. More experience, a lot more time, and above all things– more appreciation for film.
In no particular order, heres a few pictures I’ve managed to snap over the last little while and what went on before the shutter click.
We started spending a lot of time talking over coffee– dropping the artisanal aspect for atmospheric nostalgia. I always drank coffee alone while I was in school, but soon found that cream and sugar stirs better when you’re not paying much attention to it. Our words soon filled the spaces of Galaxy diner, and Cafe Beano– cramming as many people as possible in a chipped vinyl booth and discussing the changes made since the last time we’d inhabited the seats.
Various half-rolls of film dedicated to party nights. The parties at the ratcave are not usually packed but the people that do walk through our living room are valued dearly. Everyone always dressed so spectacularly, fitting perfectly to whatever theme we threw at them. This day, we went and bought forks to hang from our ceiling– frantically writing memes on the handles before dressing in whatever outfit we could find on the floor to scuffle down to the liquor store with the highly questionable employees.
Going through different film themes depending on the day, I find myself with a lot of sets. I’ve more photos of hanging clothes, desolate diners, night-lit dashboards and worn down street signs than I know what to do with.
The best part of film is the idea of permanence. You can capture something, and even when the parts and pieces that made up the photo is gone, you have this image. And you can’t delete it, and you can’t forget it, and you can’t misremember it. The chemicals have burned into a sheet, and the memory remains the same. Once you are real, you cannot become unreal.
Eventually, work started. Night shift. The bus ride was long, and the hours were longer. But this one view that I would see on my way home everyday reminded me why I was putting in work. To come back home to the city when everyone else was so eager to leave it. To keep my film stock plentiful. To stay in and capture my favourite place in the world– downtown.
Our home is, and will remain our sanctuary. Switching from Rachelle’s spotify to mine, to Jersey Shore and back again, spinning 1970’s porno soundtracks on vinyl and The Smiths right after, the hours spent in our crammed little living room can’t be counted. No matter what garbage was happening in the outside world, it wouldn’t really matter after a few minutes in the cave. Rachelle sitting on the yellow floral god-awful couch and me sitting on the spinning, destroyed, missing-an-arm armchair that threatened to tip at any moment, or both of us huddled together on the couch yelling at the computer because Rachelle broke down and bought a Sportsnet subscription, it seemed we never really ran out of shit to do.
Man, I still love my life dearly. Capturing these photos makes me mad happy, and looking back on them is never tedious.
I wanna keep shooting, I wanna start developing my own film to save some cash, I want to spend all my time learning and getting better at everything film. I’ve definitely gotten further since my last ‘adventures in film’, and I hope to be further still by the time the next one comes out. Sometimes I get all fucked up and wonder what the point of all of this is, but it’s this. It’s to share, and to progress, and to learn this amazing skill that I genuinely enjoy doing. And I’m gonna continue to put it all out there as often as I can.
seeya,
a ❤
undesirables 