EDITING PT: 9 - lets not be negative..

after a long wait my negatives have finally arrived in norway, which means i can now get stuck into completing the edit for my book 'decade'..
that´s not the full story though.
16 over-filled A4 ring-binders hold personal or professional work shot over the past 18 years in a couple of dozen different countries... boxes of uncut 35mm film shot for commercial purposes remain un-filed along with uncounted rolls from gigs, after-parties and other occasions.. and there is a 'magic-film' bag with perhaps 30 or 40 rolls of undeveloped 120 and 35mm film, saved over time to the point i cannot remember what's on them.. stuffed into a plastic bag due to a previous lack of funds to develop them.. god knows what's there.

the photos go much further back than music work from the past 10 years and i'm looking forward to seeing india and tibetan refugees again, through the eyes of a naive and more than slightly mind-altered 18 year old..
being a new father, now more than ever the periods of my life where i have introduced an element of risk are coming to mind.. and this time with more of an idea of what my parents must have thought; about what i was trying to do and whether it was worth it, about illness and if i'd survive the next natural disaster or bout of dysentery. neither of them really understood my photography and dad died young - when i was 19 and after only a couple of my photographic journeys abroad.. he never saw the 'sense' which came from my work further down the road, seeing only the tough times and drive towards seemingly nowhere... towards nothing tangible..
mum still wants me to get a proper job.. teaching is the closest i have got to somewhere she understands, and upon hearing about the lecturing i am now doing it's her belief that i have reached some kind of goal.. a conclusion in her mind which is not in mine.
i think this comes from their own history;
dad - a black-taxi driver in london for decades.. his father was a fireman, killed during the toughest night of bombing during the WW2 blitz of the east-end..
mum's family clawed up the social ladder with hard work and graft, living just outside london.. little rewarded..
to them both what i was trying to do had no basis in the realities of a life which they had understood to be near impossibly tough.. war babies who were encouraged to eat the fat off the bacon, while i rejected the fat as waste.
where these meandering thoughts lead is here - when i get a book finished, be it about music or the projects from india, there is no question who they must be dedicated to first and foremost.. that is, those who suffered, waiting for phone-calls too infrequent, and tolerating a single-mindedness which they could not understand..
spending their life looking after a small soul with it's own ideas, needs and ambitions.. just as i am now doing myself.