I didn’t mean to, but I started something. I have an Instagram account, and it’s mostly full of sunsets, art, and visually arresting things (and puns) and now RedBubble promotions. I don’t really use Insta for writing related efforts. This week I started to.

I have been taking photos, in the opposite way to this.

It’s been both frustrating and creatively fulfilling. After endlessly tinkering with my old works and looking at other’s works (in a professional editing capacity) this has been like…I was going to say a mini catharsis. But I’m fairly certain Aristotle didn’t ascribe dimensions to artistic emotional releases. Plus, it hasn’t been even that dramatic. What this is, is an even more minuscule space to creatively explore than I’m used to, because I can. And doing something I’m less used in a different space to is helpful for creativity.

Words and pictures:  fuzzy, but mine.

The great thing about bounded spaces (visual and textual) are they create a drive for language and image to be taut. The writing must also be a response or have a relationship to the images. So far I’ve posted one micro story / poem thing a day for four days.

As a further limit, I’ve made them all relate somehow to Halloween themes. Partly because it means I don’t have to keep this going forever, and partly as a challenge to explore what spooky photography can look like.  Thus, so far, spooky includes obvious phenomena such as moonlight and carousels, but it also includes missing portraits in old books, archaeological digs, and moody sunsets and flowers, and perhaps, much more.

More of my words and images.

I’m not against Halloween as a thing in Australia. Sure, it feels a bit new to some people. However, it is an old tradition, and Australia has its share of imported folk traditions (eg hexafoils scratched above doors, plus cats, shoes, trinkets, and shirts buried in walls) and a bucket load of imported celebrations, (Christmas, Easter, public holidays for horse races etc). This is just another, via the US, in the wrong season.

I’m not going out of my way to set up photographs and the stories are written in the app. Often they are twice written. Insta has this way of crashing when I use the multiple image upload function. I haven’t minded though. Technical glitches mean I have an opportunity to rethink what I present and write. It means a chance to re-member, and re-order images and text. A better story comes about precisely because of failure (who would’ve thought?), and so the text is tighter, images more opposite. Having said that these micro story poemy things aren’t perfect. They are nuggets of thoughts, puns, responses, and memories, because art will out.  At the same time, I am quite proud of some of the phrasing.

If you would like to see/read these, you can view or follow me at Becadroit on Instagram.