I’ve been documenting a process of self-destruction as a final record of who I used to be.

This is not an art statement or anything, it’s me cleaning up my studio by coming to unseen grips with my past.

As part of my ongoing effort to preserve things interestingly for the ages (such as for my family museum project), I prepped thousands and thousands of photographs my family took between 1958 and 2010.

My parents and I sorted the photos chronologically, then shipped ’em off to a service for scanning & putting away upon return.

Some of that last bit is what you see here. As I was bagging up the photos a voice inside said, “time-lapse some of what you’re doing”. So I did, making a sort of dance.

The soundtrack is a frenetic closing-seconds snippet from Elvis From The Waist Up, a raw take of vocal ideas recorded by a girl singer in 1993 for a demo that never was done, influenced in part by these songs from Los Lobos, Madness & the Pretenders.

All I have of Elvis From The Waist Up is a more than 30-year-old unsubtle boardMix flown to cassette by spent ears past midnight while the song was being written – but listen through the unfinished din to the smoking saxophone solo by Chris Watling.

music / words / photography (c) John Carmody