The Quotidian

Out of the messy maze of happenings, ideas, sights, sounds and experiences I bump into on daily basis, I try to pull a single strand and pick a path through, designing some kind of narrative or single idea for my blog posts.
It is sometimes hard, to squash the ephemera into some kind of moulded shape that will be recognisable, comprehensible, to anyone else. On other occasions it is hard to even see that there is anything in front of me to say anything about. It all looks plain, unremarkable, ordinary.
This (almost) daily blogging ritual has of course heightened my senses and I look around me as I move from morning to night (and back again) for moments, insights, curios I can bring to this spot.
It is the same on Flickr, everyone looks about them for inspiration. As well as showing high points, moments of celebration, they present curios, family affairs and effervescent happenings. They often exoticise the mundane. Flickrites seek the unique in the ordinary, or represent the ordinary to us again and we recognise it in new ways.
We see our lives online, mediated by pixcels, words and graphics, presented afresh.
So we have stuff like

Desk space;
Kitsch in bin;
The Bag Pool;
People on cell phones;
Even stuff like this snack bar or this snack.

And if you have ever been on Flickr you will already know so many more.
And there is no doubt that I have become more visually aware, so that I see images like
Plates



Bags:




and
this sort of thing:


are evidence of this.

When I was in Berlin last year, I was acutely aware of the liminal spaces in that city; the inbetween spaces, the ignored terrains between official happenings and sites. I have pictures and posts here.

In writing about 'the everyday', Joe Moran prefers theFrench term 'quotidian', sinve he says it better captures the essence of mundane, boring, routinised and ritual daily practices.

Just into the introduction I am loving Moran's book. Little gems litter the text and he has gathered some gorgeous quotations, such as Sartre's observation that people in bus queues are a

'plurality of isolations' .

I also find Moran's view of cultural studies as being either about one of two things: 'ritual' or 'popular consumption' an interesting angle.

(And probably I should have put this post on Blogtrax.)