Dagguerreotypist

Yes, the name has changed. I'm not Perihelion anymore. I am not 'somewhere on the orbit', and I am no longer trying to 'get a grip'. That was all back then. When I was eighteen, and thought someday, I will conquer the world. That ambition has receded. Not so much due to the realisation of its impossibility as to the diminution of its importance. And the consequent lack of importance of the idea of Perihelion - of flying closer to the Sun.

The name has changed, for I have changed. So I am, now, a Daguerreotypist, a word that I'm not sure even exists. But I like the play - the Dagguerreotype, and the Typist. Since I think and write in pictures, mostly. (Really, it's almost scientifically proven. Back when I was with Orient Longman, and was writing an article on Howard Gardner, I took the test, and it turned out I was more Picture Smart than anything else. Word Smart and Music Smart followed closely. People Smart, of course, was my lowest score.)

And "never a letter", yes. "Always an ambiguous hieroglyph". Sergei Eisenstein, on The Fourth Dimension of Cinema. A post from back when I really was Perihelion (and didn't just carry the name for old time's sake) said "Main Sergei Eisenstein Banna Chati Hoon." Well, clearly, he still inspires me at some level, but like I said, I don't feel the need to conquer the world anymore.

So here it is, a rebus, a cipher, frames from an experimental film, or maybe just snatches of a straightforward story. I really can't tell, sometimes, but they're all I've got, my words and my pictures. To ascertain my location in the black hole of uncertainty that has come from the six years of seeking out the details of things, seeing imperfection: in the world, in people, in myself. And watching, in the process, my own skin moult, cell by tiny cell.