The Cake that Never Was.
Several weeks ago I took to Twitter in a state of utter despair. I was in the middle of a building site, AKA my flat, with disparate jobs half completed by some absentee builders. These utter, utter bastards had started various jobs and then completely disappeared. Then they came back, then they disappeared. Their contracted 3 week schedule rapidly stretched out to four, five, even six weeks. I had displayed a remarkable amount of forethought and preparedness by photographing a months worth of blog recipes, prior to the work starting, being fully aware that my kitchen and photography area would be utterly disrupted for a few weeks.
On the fourth and final week of pre-made photos, I sat down on Friday morning to write a post, reeling from the stress of builders who don’t do what they say they will (as if I should be surprised by that, my recent experience of builders has been awful), only to find week 4’s photographs were nowhere to be seen.
It was final nail in the coffin of my repressed anger, I broke down and quietly wept (or more likely, I just swore, a LOT). I searched everything three times. Memory cards — No. External hard drive — No. Anywhere else? No. Crap. It was the last thing I needed in a week that was already awful. I gave up, walked away and wallowed in my sadness, bereft after the pride of being so organised, only to find I had let myself down at the final hurdle. My kitchen was in no fit state to produce and photograph things, so my blog was left wanting that week.
You Idiot.
You see, the photographs were there all along. They were sitting there the whole time on my external HDD, under the name ‘honey walnut celeriac cake’. There are probably many reasons why I missed them, first and foremost because of the name. I generally name things with the primary ingredient first, which in this case would be ‘Celeriac’. I’d obviously skipped that convention for the more alluring ‘honey walnut’, which cloaked this folder with invisibility. I also created a second folder called ‘Celeriac cake with honey and walnut’ which was empty, a little decoy which I cannot explain, that I had subconsciously created, only to parry myself into deeper levels of despair upon finding it’s bare innards.
But more than that, I obviously had a psychological block. The photos were there all along. Despite the naming, despite the similar, yet empty folder, the real images were always there. They were hidden in plain sight, I couldn’t see the wood for the trees, they were right in front of me.
More Pain, Please.
But that’s the thing, people often attract what they project in life. People who project sadness attract sadness, people who project joy attract joy. I was annoyed, angry, upset, depressed and tired about everything else going on in my life. I didn’t see those images because I didn’t want to, part of me wanted more pain so that I could shout and curse and complain. None of this was done consciously, of course. In retrospect, it’s easy to see that by exercising some pragmatism I could have carefully sifted my blog photos folder and found these images. I, however, was aligning with frustration and disappointment, so I searched unsuccessfully for the images several times, then quickly ran to Twitter to bitch, complain and have a small nervous breakdown, because all of those actions would make me feel justified in my frustrations.
Sometimes, it’s hard work trying to keep up with my own mind.
Gavin Wren is a professional food photographer, food blogger at le petit oeuf, occasional food writer and Food Policy MSc student at City, University of London. He talks food on Twitter and his photographs are on Flickr.
