Bullshit Workshops

As a late middle-aged, professional middle-class, Christian-heritage, heterosexual, white male, you'd think the wicked old Patriarchy would be working for me like a top-of-the-range mojo.  I snap my fingers, and good stuff just happens...  My every wish is anticipated, and delivered before I can even form it into the rhetorically-perfect words that my scribes attribute to me.  Have that one scrubbed and brought to my tent!  Will no-one rid me of this troublesome priest?  Player's, please!  Make mine a double!

Sadly, and bafflingly, this is not the case.  In fact, if you had to identify one of the most baffled and sad groups in society, late middle-aged, etc. men would be a good place to look.  Most of us are a pathetic remnant of whatever hyper-masculine act we managed to work up in our youth.  That skin-tight Superman outfit just looks ridiculous on the paunchy, balding travesty that appears in the mirror.  It always did look ridiculous, of course, but no-one had the courage to say so back when it used to fit, to adapt Clive James' description of Schwarzenegger, like a nylon sock stuffed with walnuts.

Above all, many men, it seems, forget how to have friends.  They also forget how to have fun, and the two are probably not unrelated.  I saw it in my own father, and I see it all around: somehow fatherhood, career, and responsibilities push friendship and fun way down the priority list.  Part of the problem, of course, is the way young men define and experience both:  you can't be a responsible father and spend your evenings passing a bong around.  "Daddy can't sort that out now, sweetheart, because he's off his FACE! Hahahahaha!"  There is a built-in self-destruct mechanism in laddish fun, that means it won't survive the process of becoming a citizen.  Or, a "straight", as we used to call them.  Us, I mean.  Sigh...

Which is where an obsession with photographic gear comes in.  It's self-evident that most "photographers" are nothing of the sort: their real interest is in acquiring, knowing about, and discussing cameras and lenses.  It's something to talk about.  It might as well be cars, or woodworking; it's something to have in common with other lonely guys.  It's a reason to go out there on the Web looking for virtual company.  It's also retail therapy.  There are thousands out there, aching for a chance to discuss the relative merits of their next purchase, including bags to keep it all in, FFS.  If you're so-minded, it's an ever-replenishing money-tree, just waiting to be harvested.

I don't visit my local camera shop much, these days, never needing film or processing, but whenever I do, I seem to end up waiting for the assistant to politely disengage from some guy – it's always a guy – who wants to hear himself saying out loud and at length the gear-speak he's been reading online all week.  Stuff about focal lengths and viewfinders and mirrorless versus DSLRs and what on earth is going on with Canon?  The assistants are polite, because these are the guys who will actually spend some serious money.  Unlike me, they're never in there just looking for a used 49mm lens-cap.

For the really well-heeled-but-lonely camera-obsessives, there are workshops.  Now, back in the last century, the photographic workshop was a serious thing.  I've already written about Duckspool, for example.  But the workshop idea quickly went bad, and became a money-spinning "holiday with gear-heads".  At Duckspool any gear-talk would get you put in the Naughty Corner.  Camera club types were ruthlessly reconstructed via Maoist-style self-criticism sessions (or "critique", as it is euphemistically known).  Until you've witnessed Thomas Joshua Cooper berating some hapless competition-freak you don't know the meaning of fear.  I doubt very much that many contemporary workshop leaders are prepared to make their paying guests cry for their sins against the True Way of photography.

Similarly, most photo-bloggers are beguiled by gear and technique.  Meister-blogger Mike Johnston himself is clearly never happier than when slipping into lens-talk.  He knows he shouldn't, but – dammit! – just this once!  It's only the second time this week...  But one blogger I've started reading recently is different.  He is obsessed by those who are obsessed by gear and technique.  In particular, he devotes the sort of time and energy into dismantling the nostrums of popular blogger Ming Thein that others might dedicate to Heidegger.  If you don't know Andrew Molitor's Photos and Stuff, you might enjoy it.  This entire post was kicked off by his recent observation about habitual workshop attendees, that they "enjoy the travel and hanging about with other gearheads and talking about bullshit. Me too. Well, not the gearheads. But I adore talking about bullshit."  Well, yes, indeed – "plus one" on that, I thought.

Then a lightbulb went on.  A flashbulb.  A dazzlingly intense studio light.  Bullshit workshops!  Why not?  Gather loosely thematic groups of isolated, lonely, well-off obsessives; hand in all gear at the entrance, like weapons; add a brilliant but inclusive conversationalist or two; mix in suitable intoxicants; let the bullshit start!  Remember how it was when you were young?  What fun it was to set the world to rights, or to talk babbling nonsense until dawn?  Remember the pure rush of arguing your inarguable case, and the sheer buzz of bullshit?  Then you need to sign up for the Idiotic Hat Bullshit Workshops!  Places are limited, so don't delay...

It could work.  I think I'm gonna be rich...

In here, everything is permitted...