Untitled For Now (but it’s probably something like What the Fuck Are We Still Doing Here)

Notes Toward Disappearance

"To young men contemplating a voyage I would say go."
— Joshua Slocum

There’s a kind of grief that doesn’t scream. It seeps. It stains. It’s the kind you carry in your chest when the world won’t stop bleeding and you have no power to stop it. You wake up and there’s a headline. A video. A body. Another child. Another lie. Another unholy arrangement of governments and gods playing dice with people who just wanted to get through the fucking day. You see war not as history but as algorithm. As currency. As timeline fodder. And you feel your stomach turn because you know, with bone-deep certainty, that it doesn’t stop. Not really. It pauses. It mutates. It sells. And somewhere in that chaos you’ve got to carry on, go to work, smile at someone, answer emails. Take photographs of boats.

I shoot yachts. You know this. I hang off RIBs photographing beauty and power and precision. But the world is on fire. Kids are dying under rubble. Civilians are getting mowed down. Hospitals are being bombed. And here I am, adjusting shutter speed to make sure the hull doesn’t blow out in the golden light. What the fuck am I doing? What use is an image when people are being vaporised on camera and no one with power lifts a goddamn finger? What use is my job, my art, my craft, when the sea of content has already swallowed the truth and made it aesthetic?

I’m not looking for pity. Or poetry. I’m just fucking exhausted. I’m burnt out on horror. I’m tired of knowing everything and doing nothing. I’m tired of seeing pain served in pixels, of rage curated into bite-sized content blocks for hearts and shares. I want out. I want gone. Not in a tragic way, but in a vanished way. I want to un-know everything. I want silence. I want sky. I want the kind of quiet where I could go a whole week without hearing a siren or a politician or the sound of anyone explaining why mass death is complex.

And so yeah, I’ve been looking at boats. Again. Still. Always. I do every dy. I look out my window and there are 30 for sale. And I found the perfect one. A Cherubini 44 Cutter. She’s the kind of vessel that looks like she remembers what the sea is for. The kind of boat that forgives you. That welcomes ghosts. That would let you drift. Classic lines. Bluewater bones. Built like she’s never heard of war. £139,500 + VAT. That’s the price of peace, apparently. The cost of vanishing. And for the first time in weeks, I actually believed in something when I saw her. She felt real. Like hope, but wood and rigging and salt. Like she could take me somewhere the news can’t reach.

"It is not that life ashore is distasteful to me. But life at sea is better."
— Sir Francis Drake

And in the same breath, I remember a story—some sailor, can’t even remember his name, who left port before the pandemic and arrived in Australia months later, completely unaware that the entire world had locked down. No internet. No radio. No connection. Just wind and water and sunsets. He pulled into harbour and was greeted by border patrol in hazmat suits. And I’ve never envied someone more. Not because he was untouched. But because for a while, he had no idea what had been lost.

That’s the fantasy. That’s the fucking dream. To float so far from all this that pain can’t reach me. That rage can’t call. To bake in the sun. To fish. To dive. To go weeks without speaking, without knowing, without being asked to take a stance on something I was powerless to stop. Not because I don’t care. But because I care so hard it’s starting to hurt the people around me. I can’t switch it off. But maybe I can sail it out.

I picture it. The boat. The sea. A stack of notebooks. No signal. No calendar. Just a stove, a compass, and enough sailcloth to make it somewhere no one’s fighting. I’d write by lantern light and throw pages overboard like prayers. Some would dissolve. Some might reach you. And maybe that’s all I’ve ever been doing anyway—writing nonsense in the dark and hoping someone, somewhere, finds it and doesn’t throw it back.

"I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky…"
— John Masefield

There’s a storm in the world and it’s not stopping. I can’t shoot it. I can’t fix it. All I can do is feel it and try not to drown. So yeah. I want the boat. I want the fantasy. And if I can’t have it—if £168,000 (or whatever the exchange rate of emotional collapse is today) is too steep for salvation—then I’ll keep dreaming. I’ll keep writing. I’ll keep standing in the rain, photographing boats I can’t afford while the sea refuses to choose a side.

That’s the price of disappearance. Of vanishing cleanly, without a splash. A small price for a chance at silence that doesn’t come with an ad break. A bargain, really, when you weigh it against the cost of knowing. Knowing everything. All the time. Every war, every horror, every new grotesque twist of a collapsing planet handed to you like a poisoned canapé, hourly. I’m not saying the boat would fix anything, but it might at least let me rot away somewhere new. Somewhere with good woodgrain and no signal. Somewhere I don’t have to scream at my editing software every goddamn week, wondering if clarity matters when the whole world’s already blurred to hell. I’d sell my camera, but I’m not that poetic. I’d sell my soul, but I already spent it on film, and anyway I’m not sure I ever had full ownership. So if anyone out there has the funds, or a penchant for old-world patronage, or a billionaire uncle with a maritime kink and a conscience that itches—hell, even a cursed inheritance they’d like to offload—I’m right here. Or not. That’s fine too. I’ll keep scanning listings like rosary beads, whispering displacement and draft like prayers, hoping one day the ocean picks me back.

And maybe that’s what this post is. Just another bottle overboard. A message from nowhere. A scream into silence.

If you find it, don’t fix it.

Just read it. And drift.