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June 10, 2007
I arrived back in Adelaide late last night, had a drink, watched a bit of free -to air TV (Channel Seven) ---the BBC drama Inspector Lynley Mysteries---and then fell asleep with the flu. I was tired from working all day whilst feeling feverish.
All I remember from the tv is that I just couldn't figure out why it was necessary to have the character of the cold hard senior woman police inspector who was sp full of angst, resentment and bitterness. The interpersonal relationships were mysterious--- nice upper class man, bitch middle class woman. I didn't really understand the gender stereotypes nor the morality of the ethical life.
Adelaide was very quiet when I walked the streets to the Franklin bus station to catch a bus down to Victor Harbor early this morning. Bus travel is so different from air travel--- the passengers at the bus station are teenagers, older Australian's, or those with little money. The public phones didn't work and there are signs that say this phone costs 60c a call, and don't bash the phone if things don't work.
I remembered that I spend a substantial portion of my life in the transit spaces called highways, airports, supermarkets and shopping malls. So I started to take some 'on-the-road photographs' whilst I travelled on the bus. We could be anywhere really. I remembered other times years ago. I'd forgotten them.
Gary Sauer-Thompson, Victor Harbor bus, 2007
I remembered how photography gave me my sense of identity. The images I took weren't very good, as it was difficult to catch the mood of isolation, with each individual keeping to themselves and each being unknown to the others. My eye wasn't in, and I was not fast enough to snap the image amidst all the movement. The magic moment stuff is not my style.
But I kept plugging away to try and get get my eye in:
Gary Sauer-Thompson, Victor Habor, 2007
As I drove around Victor Harbor in the late afternoon amidst all the holiday crowds looking at the road and scenes from car interiors I was reminded of times past:
Gary Sauer-Thompson, Remembering Victor Habor, 2007
Somehow my life seems to be an excess of travel. The travel in the air and on the road is a non-place compared to Victor Harbor as a place with an identity and history. My experience of time, which involves an efforts to construct meaningful life-story and a narrative of both an individual and collective sort, is premised on a constitutive dialectic between remembrance and forgetting. Remembrance is like a screen on which memory traces are projected. And our personal narratives are bound up with, and shaped by the process of forgetting.
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nice pics. I am happy that you are trying to connect with the world. Adelaide people are what you see is what you get. I lived there for a while in edwardstown and would ride my racing bike along south rd every morning to work in mile end. Funny.