How the mighty have fallen. Once upon a time, I was an expert and wizard at hosting things on the internet. Now I’m back to the humble beginnings of accidentally deleting the production database for my personal blog. Well sort of, I am just too lazy to restore a backup, which brings me to the reason for this post. A fresh start on the internet.
As I sat on my computer realising what I had just done, trying to patch for the latest WordPress zero-day vulnerability, a wave of peace filled my mind, rather than dread.
“A fresh start”, I thought. My mind immediately wandered into the depths of what my goal of keeping this corner of the internet active might be. Then I started thinking about the philosophy of being okay with burning the content I previously written. I then wondered if this was the release Brian Duffy had felt, when he burned his photographs and artwork.
Brian Duffy was a famous fashion and portrait photographer, notable for shooting for Vogue from 1957. His work was considered to be the ultimate record of history and pop culture for the next 25 years, having been the photographer of choice for icons like David Bowie.
In 1979, Brian Duffy chose to completely give up photography. This was when he tried to set fire to his artwork. Fortunately for the history books, his neighbours were not a fan of the smoke, nor his antics. As a result, a fair chunk of his work was saved.
Brian returned to photography in 2009, ultimately a year before his demise.
Although my reset was 30 minutes, rather than 30 years, I still consider this point to be my creative reset. I’m still not sure what is going to be shoved into this corner of the internet, nor what my rekindled relationship with blogging will be like. Maybe I’ll post about my engines. Clever things I discover? Maybe the odd thing about work. Maybe I might even get my camera out and stick the results on here.
Or, I might choose to make philosophical comparisons to history.
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