Drift

It’s been a day’s drive since I blew through the last one-light town. It’ll be another day’s toil before I blow the next. A single predatory radio signal winds across the barren land in search of a host, until it finds one in the dashboard of my vehicle. For the next 45 minutes, the waves lap at my antenna. Forgotten tunes from a forsaken land motivate the traversing of another mile; and another; and another… until the melody shifts into competing phases that drift apart and crumble into grains of noise. Static.

I have two choices: spin the dial in search of some new sonic coherency to replace the crackling void; or embrace the static. I choose the latter. There’s motivation in the unknown. When will the next insidious signal escape the transmitter and seek respite in my ear? When will its grains coagulate, shift, and drift into the next phase of this journey? And what will it be?

Granted — in this day of Sirius, satellites and cell towers, the car radio metaphor is a bit anachronistic. But then so am I, with my wall of film cameras and studio full of analog synths. But it’s exactly these cameras and synths to which this metaphor applies. Creation is a lifelong journey, but inspiration can be fleeting — like radio signals in the desert.

My photographic inspiration has been strong the past couple years, though I’ve yet to really define exactly what it is. Fortunately I don’t feel the urge to try. Prior to my current path, there was a long stretch of static when my previous inspiration — ‘humans interacting with one another and their environment’ — ceased to exist in ways that interested me, and shifted into ‘humans interacting with their smart phones’. For a couple years, I struggled to see the humour and the relevancy in this landscape, but could no longer find it in the ceaseless monotony. But I continued to walk and shoot — day-in and day-out — until the current muse came wafting in.

As is often the case, my musical inspiration is 180 degrees out-of-phase with my photography’s. So for the past couple years, while my photographic incentives have been strong, my musical vision has been dim. Static. But recently, thanks to my decision to churn through some gear, plus a renewed sense of purpose, I’m starting to pick up a signal. Tentative. Fragile. It drifts in and out and now dovetails with my photography motivations — like two stations fighting over the same frequency band.

Though music and photographic inspiration rarely strike at the same time, my tendencies in both disciplines are similar. Specifically, in both music and photography, I am drawn to abstraction and complexity, yet battle with bouts of banality. The difference between them is, again, a matter of phase. In photography, my first tendency is to photograph the banal, but I’m able to push through it and deliver the product I desire. In music, my first tendency is toward the complex and experimental, but then I start ‘fixing’ the composition until it ultimately becomes banal. So with photography, it’s knowing never to stop trying. With music, it’s knowing never to try too hard.

Last month’s song is a prime example. In January, I recorded a short 40-second musical idea — just to remind myself what I wanted to be writing. It was pure chaos, in the best possible sense. Last month, flush with ideas, I decided to build them into a full-blown song. Unfortunately, by the time I’d finished the composition, I’d scrubbed nearly every drop of interest from it, leaving behind a drifting, empty shell of a song. I had no choice but to call it Drift, because that’s exactly what it does.

Creative drifting is nothing new for me. I recently perused an old hard drive, where I unearthed a 20-year-old recording called Spiraling Pods. I had completely forgotten this song’s existence, but upon listening to it, immediately recollected the circumstances surrounding it. Back then, after a rather fertile musical period, I was starting to drift. I remember listening to the finished master and thinking, “It says nothing. It goes nowhere. It has no point.” It was the last song I wrote/recorded for the next seven years — 2005’s drift before the static.

Hopefully, as this year progresses, the music signal will strengthen without the photography signal fading away. I’d welcome the chance to finish my journey with two radio stations on the dial.

©2025 grEGORy simpson

ABOUT THE PHOTOS : Clearly, much like the strained radio analogy and the titular song, the photos are also metaphors. Also, like the titular song, they were created in the last month — so as to provide an accurate snapshot of the current creativity signal strength. Drift: Phase Shift was photographed on a Leica M2, fronted with a v4 35mm f/2 Summicron lens, using Fomapan 400 exposed at ISO 200 and developed in Rodinal (Blazinal). Drift: Multipathing was shot on a Canon Powershot V1. Drift: Interference was shot with a Nikon FE and a Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 lens, on HP5+ at ISO 400 and developed in Rodinal (Blazinal).

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