Through my Eyes

I'm always amazed by how many people hate being photographed and how many more truly dislike being interviewed, I guess it makes my job that much more challenging, and after twenty five years spent sticking my camera into people's faces, I know a thing or two about how to put you at ease and make you talk.

What fascinates me is looking through old issues of The Bugle and reading yellowed articles about people I once interviewed. What they said, what were the issues they described then, how our concerns have changed over the years. And yet how everything has stayed the same.

Recently some school yearbooks came under fire for a few American presidential election candidates. Exposing, the now carefully crafted and meticulously polished political nominees as, well, as what they arespoilt, entitled and often not very PC individuals, especially when we weigh it against our insular and so ultra sensitive moral compass of the 'modern' era.

Yearbooks are meant to serve as time capsules, and are by nature insular - the text and its context can sometimes only be interpreted by those who are in its pages. But what makes the latest yearbook allegations so damning is that they are images that provide a stark reminder of how culture has - or, rather, hasn't - changed over the past decades.

Looking through archives makes me so utterly nostalgic. Words written so long ago, fundamentally insular things, their meanings opaque to anyone who isn't part of them today.

As we endure more load-shedding in our beautiful country. I can't wait to see the end of this challenging time we are going through as a nation. I can't wait for the day that I open The Bugle and say; "Do you remember load-shedding That was a dark time for our country"

Everything that is written, recorded and posted, remains imprinted somewhere in the big archives, stored in boxes in some dark and dusted attic, waiting to be rediscovered and read and ultimately judged, of course.

So next time you plan to comment on that sight, or give an interview to a journalist make sure its something you can be proud of fifty years from now. Make sure that what you are saying will not come to haunt you when you least expect it.

The greatest dualism we face in this life could be the split between who we are and who we think we ought to be. Sometimes that gap fuels our aspiration to follow a certain path of thinking, sometimes it simply fuels our self-hatred, and all too often we confuse these two notions of self entirely.

Whether its being recorded or not, be conscious of what comes out of your mouth. What you say has true bearing on what manifests in your life.