Loss and Learning

Michael Jackson is dead?? What the hell?? Husband called to tell me a few hours ago and I was confused. "No", I told him, "Farrah Fawcett is dead, its been all over the news all day". "Yes, I know that, but I promise you, Michael Jackson is dead too, of a heart-attack" he said.

I couldn't believe it. I don't know why. I guess his music was a large part of my life growing up and while I really enjoyed it, I was never a hardcore fan or anything, yet I found myself feeling very sad. Sad cos his life although extremely successful, was also just a big fat mess, full of weirdness and suffering and now somehow, it all just seems so pointless and shocking. 

The shock is heightened as I watch the various news channels spin continuous footage from his long and extensive career. It just gets more unbelievable.  I guess I have some clue now how my mother felt when she found out Elvis had died. To this day I still don't think she's over it.  

Moving topics, although I don't know how you do that smoothly after talking about death, but I did want to mention my best friend Derval (aka Scratcher) who while I was in Ireland a few weeks ago, selflessly volunteered to throw herself in front of my camera so I could work on perfecting my shooting skills and although we had a blast hanging out on Howth beach in Dublin, from a shooting perspective, it turned out the be very, very frustrating.  Not cos Scratcher was a bad model, actually she was amazing, patient and up for whatever. The problem was me. Me and my camera. I couldn't get it to co-operate. If I wanted it to go left, it went right. I was doing everything I could think of to try and correct things, but I struggled all the way. Fortunately I shot a lot, so Scratchers efforts were not in vain, we ended up with quite a few images.

I'll blog more about it soon, I just haven't had much time to go through all the photos yet. But here are a couple to wet your appetite.