Monday 21 January 2008

LIVING ON THE EDGE

I really like this photograph that I took on Christmas Eve. It is 3 pm at Tannoch Loch in Milngavie. The sun was just about to disappear, i.e. heading for twilight time.

What interested me was the idea of illustrating a boundary or, more specifically, a border – the edge of the ice on the loch where the birds were gathered. Thus the birds are "living on the edge".


The notion of "borders" is about being in that 'grey area'. They are identifiable: physical (border cities like Trieste, Tijuana), social (that area between decency and indecency; or possibly people who live in the margins of society, e.g. immigrants) and mental (the area between sanity and insanity; people with gender dysphoria) ... anywhere where it is a "twilight zone", neither one thing nor the other.

When exploring the subject on the web I came across this website. The Times states ""If you think the web is full of trivial rubbish, you will find the intellectual badinage of edge.org to be a blessed counterpoint." And the good ol' Scotsman states: "Praised by everyone from the Guardian, Prospect magazine, Wired, the New York Times and BBC Radio 4, Edge is an online collective of deep thinkers. Their contributors aren't on the frontier, they are the frontier."

Well, well! If you hear the noise of crumbling it is me pushing out the frontiers!


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