Saturday night's alright for Fighting....or just staying in and doing other stuff

I can only speak for me but this week felt long. My mind was all over the place and sleep was in short supply. Although staying in and locking down has a lot of pros and I am certainly using the time to get creative, I am getting to a lot of things on the stay-at-home-bucket-list, but it is also turning time into something they might experience in deep space.
I miss the 24hr diner at the bottom of the street, eating pie and drinking coffee with all the other insomniacs (yep the coffee doesn’t help), I miss hopping on a bus and going to visit Davey in Venice for our regular stroll down Abbott Kinney for sandwiches and extortionately priced cups of tea. I miss going downtown and wandering round the galleries. But most of all I miss lining up outside a venue, going to see the latest thing, downing a beer and flinging myself around to some loud and sweaty rock and roll.

Are we in retrograde?

As the days roll around and quarantine continues I am aware of the ebbs and flows that come with being locked down. My usual get-up-and-go is not always accessible and the flow of my days is changing as I learn to listen and surrender to whatever feels best for my mind and body. As a creative person and someone geared to getting things done this is not always the easiest route, but I give thanks for good friends, long lists of intended projects and a pile of books to read. I have been ploughing through Mark Twain, Joan Didion and most recently I gobbled up both Sally Rooney novels. I have watched and rewatched Normal People and cannot fathom the depths that both Paul Mescal and Daisy Edgar Jones reached to turn in their performances. For anyone who hasn’t seen it yet, I recommend it as a worthwhile way to spend a few hours.
In the meantime I have been getting to grips with my instagram accounts and going through my archives of photographs. They all feel like lifetimes ago, and I am looking forward to being in a studio again with fellow creatives, some good ideas and a great sound system. I hope everyone is staying healthy. Be good to yourselves.

Darren MacMullen. Things to do in quarantine!

At Long Last

You know that feeling when you look at your website or, in my case, websites plural and you just feel like a mess? Maybe you don’t but I sure do. Too many images, a lot of them are years old and you still love them but you know it’s time for some housekeeping, it just seems like a huge job and you have to have a cup of tea, watch a movie, go for a walk or any number of alternatives before you can even begin to get going?
Well, I have been kept awake, tossing and turning, imagining the mess my hard drives are in and on and on and on.
But along came lockdown, and with it, hours upon hours upon days and now weeks of uninterrupted, distraction-free, no excuses kind of time that secretly I hoped I might have….at some point….in the future.
I looked at the several hundred terabytes sitting on my office shelf and took a deep breath and I began the process……yikes.
Now, a few weeks in and my hard drives are almost so organized you could eat off them. You know what I mean.
Portraits are alphabetized, events are no longer in triplicate spread over god knows how many backups. My spaghetti junction looks more like a straight and traffic-free road, not unlike the 101 these days.
I’m getting there, a few portfolios still to clean up, some harsh editing still left to do but for the most part the website is beginning to take shape and I can sleep again.
Let me know what you think, which images should stay, which ones should go…I welcome the feedback.
Stay happy and healthy everyone.