In March, my mom and I went to Chicago. We took Amtrak’s California Zephyr, which might now be my most riden Amtrak route (possible second to the Coast Starlight). While in Chicago, I finally decided to pull the trigger on a new camera. My Fuji X-T30 II is amazing. I love it, and it’s been a emblematic of what my partner calls my endless persuit of personal happiness.
My MO the past ~year has been to add friction to things I want to do less, and take it away from things I want to do more. I’ve distanced myself from social media, and my phone more broadly. In an effort to bring meaning back into music, I cancelled my Apple Music subscription earlier this month in favor of buying and ripping music.
A couple months back, I began a slow-progressing project: gps doohickey. GPS doohickey is a little ESP32 powered GPS logger that I will carry with me everywhere. It will give me a 24/7 GPS trace of my life. It won’t send anything to the cloud, it’ll only sync to my computer at home. It’ll help me accurately and automatically geo-tag photos, replace my phone for Strava, and let me do cool data things. Big data is cool when done on a personal scale and without the involvement of capitalists.
My X-T30 has helped remove yet another dependence on my phone: photos. It’s smaller than my previous camera, a bulky Nikon D3400, it has nicer looking RAWs (less dependence on phone/computer to edit), and it’s comfortable to wear on my back for hours at a time. My favorite Chicago Camera store, Central Camera, didn’t carry it, and my local camera store has been closed for a couple years, so I went against my moral intuition and ordered it with an 18-55mm Fuji lens from B&H. B&H, being the climate arsonists that they are, charges you more for non-2-day shipping, so I figured what the hell and ordered it to our hotel.
While waiting for my Fuji to arrive, I shot my last couple days of photos on my Nikon. When I got home, I gave it to my partner. It’s brought me a lot of joy to see it bring them joy lately. They’ve been using it for a multimedia class they’re taking.
A farewell, of sorts.
My Fuji arrived, and I began shooting on it. I fell in love immediately. Walking Chicago’s magnificant mile, and photographing my favorite building ever (Carbon and Carbide) was amazing. I love this camera.
The thing I photographed the most on that trip was the archway off of the main hall at Union Station. Above boring, 1990s looking sliding glass doors soars a beautiful wall of stone, the bottom row etched with “To All Trains”. A couple months later, Steve Albini would die, and Shellac would publish To All Trains, with a photo of that very same sign as the cover art.
From my notes on June 7th:
I was introduced to Shellac only after the death of Steve Albini, who seemed like a cool guy. I walked into the shop and Jay and Joel where playing a Shellac record and told me Steve Albini had died. That night Jay sent me a couple TikToks of interviews with Albini, and I began to slowly explore their discography. To All Trains was released shortly after Albini’s death, and I’m really enjoying it. Scabby The Rat is my favorite song on the album right now.
On that trip, I lost my headphones. I used my AirPods and Loop earplugs on the trains home——we took the Empire Builder and Starlight——and didn’t notice until I unpacked. I’ve been mourning them since. They feel like the last missing piece in my puzzle to enjoy music more meaningfully. I miss them.
I’m saving up for new headphones right now, but good Bluetooth headphones with noise cancelling are expensive. I’ve been researching and reading reviews, and so far my front runners are Sony WH-1000XM4s (what I had) or Sony WH-1000XM5’s. The XM5s sound a bit better, but are pricier, and I don’t trust that the hinge won’t break. I want headphones that sound good, have good noise cancelling because I’m going off to college (consensus seems to be that Sony’s WXM line is best), comfortable, and have the ability to listen over wire, as I plan to eventually build my own mp3 player. If you have opinions, I want to hear them. email natalie@43masonic.com.
Lately, I’ve been listening to: Kind of Blue, Miles Davis; The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, David Bowie; Wusul, Shay Hazan; To All Trains, Shellac; BRAT, Charli XCX