Perspective.

I've always had an interest in thinking about perspective. That sounds strange, right! How could I possibly more interested in something like perspective than anybody else is? I don't know, maybe everybody else is just as interested in it as I am, we just don't speak about it.

The idea that you have of something you create is so different from other peoples idea of it. Like the lyrics of a song. When you sing or hear lyrics you've written yourself, you don't just hear the words, you experience all of the other things in between. A friend of mine asked me a while back what I thought of when I sing my songs. I told him that I completely return to my state of mind from when I wrote the song, and this worried him a little bit. "That can't be healthy!", he said. But writing helps me gain perspective, so returning to that state of mind is surley a good thing. It's kind of like a musical photograph. When you look at a photo that means something to you, you return to that moment, right? Well it's kind of the next level up from that. You return to the moment when you returned to the moment, now with some perspective on it. Read that sentence over a few times and it will make sense.

On the note of photos, it's the same deal. When you see a picture you've taken or one taken of you, you have a completely different perspective of that photo to someone who's disconnected from it. They see it as a visual image, but you see it as a vivid still of a past moment. I often try to disconnect myself from photos I've taken, to see it from an outsiders perspective. Then I notice all the visual stuff as well. For example..


This is one of my favourite pictures. To you, it's a pretty picture of a cute little Japanese kid holding a leaf. Because of it's cute factor, it's appealing to you. But to me, the kid is Anna, and she's collecting leafs for me as a gift, because her Grandma told her we don't have yellow ones where I live, and she felt very sorry for me. The yellow ones are her favourite. Kids don't tend to like me very much, but Anna did. Now you have my perspective on the picture, it makes more sense why I love it so much, and why I took it. It's no longer just a visual. That's what this blog was originally about; telling the story behind pictures I've taken. But my pictures are few (and terrible quality!), which is why that died. Maybe I'll do it more often though.

It's also relevant in everyday life situations. I love those situations when you realise that if anyone else could see what you were doing, they would believe you to be insane. If you can share one of these situations with someone, it really shows how comfortable you are with them. That you're confident they will share your perspective, or at least accept it.


I love that add on TV for a brand of bread (I can't remember which brand), with the line that goes something like, "character is what we are unobserved". We are the most like ourselves when we are not perceived by anyone, because we're not thinking about how they will perceive us, and therefore not attempting to create the ideal image of ourselves. How annoying! It's so difficult not to think about how we're being perceived by others, as we're always so conscious of it. I think it's important to try not to think about it, even though it's impossible to always succeed.

You probably won't want to read the word 'perspective' for a very long time now, so I'll make it stop.

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