I love Glasgow just as I love the Earth. But this is a Glasgow from a different perspective: from the air. Not 'from the air' as in polluting your way into it and divesting yourself of your own locomotive force - such things simply will not do in this age of growing ecological awareness - but 'from the air' as in from the hills, the braes, the fells - the ambient array - that surround Glasgow and give her its name. This is self-powered aerial photography, where the 'Aircraft' is your own locomoting-locating body crafted by the elements and the land and its synergetic flow, where the aerial is you, listening in to this vastness of Glasgow outwith the interference and distortion of any airplane engines and dials. Here, we have both 'from the air' and 'from the ground' simultaneously. To see a place from the viewpoint of an airplane engine is not natural. To be sure, it's exciting (I myself have a shelf of aerial photography books) and fascinating, but therein lies its flaw. It hypnotizes us out of thinking and so we accept it as normal, and slowly this normal becomes the new natural.
But the real natural 'from the air' is of course from elevated regions - hills, plateaux, fells, braes - having earned and deserved their perspective out of sheer effort. We are not birds and so do not deserve their landless perspective. But we can become ever-more bird-like by using our own wings (our legs) to walk up hills and embrace the sky (allowing the air to craft us en route). That way, we can also adopt the perch as the natural seat from which to tele-vise and attain vision.
So, this 'aerial Glasgow' is silent and pristine, vast yet light, offering a completely fresh picture of this dear green place from its circumambient hills. Here the emphasis is on the strath herself, on her topographical majesty and elemental connection. Here, we can see the weather in its vastness, and in its variety. Here, we get intimate with Glasgow as a whole and not just as an overbaked cliche.
Here, Nature takes precedence, not man.
But the real natural 'from the air' is of course from elevated regions - hills, plateaux, fells, braes - having earned and deserved their perspective out of sheer effort. We are not birds and so do not deserve their landless perspective. But we can become ever-more bird-like by using our own wings (our legs) to walk up hills and embrace the sky (allowing the air to craft us en route). That way, we can also adopt the perch as the natural seat from which to tele-vise and attain vision.
So, this 'aerial Glasgow' is silent and pristine, vast yet light, offering a completely fresh picture of this dear green place from its circumambient hills. Here the emphasis is on the strath herself, on her topographical majesty and elemental connection. Here, we can see the weather in its vastness, and in its variety. Here, we get intimate with Glasgow as a whole and not just as an overbaked cliche.
Here, Nature takes precedence, not man.
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