Thank you for dropping by and welcome to my new blog.

Yes, that’s right, my new blog. I’ve tried my hand at blogging in the past in different incarnations both at this domain (although on a different platform) and at another ill-conceived blog.

What was wrong with my last blog? Well, things started off well. I was determined to post something – anything – new every single day. That lasted about a month. It was good because it got me writing, but the consistency of topics and quality was awful. Looking back now, some entries are downright embarrassing. I rambled from issue to issue, covering things are disparate as film, entrepreneurship and politics. I’ll grant you that those topics might be neatly connected and relevant under certain circumstances, but not in my old blog.

So what’s new here? Why will this blog be different? How will it be better? Critically, this blog will have a central focus from which I will steadfastly refuse to deviate as much as possible. Actually, one reason why I decided to preserve the old blog was just in case I get an overwhelming impulse to post something totally irrelevant, I can always do so there. The focus of this blog is Storytelling. Primarily, this means film/cinema/movies, but no medium is out of bounds. Photography, radio plays, literature and comic books are all welcome.

Here’s a bit of info about me. Hey, it’s a blog. It’s meant to be self-indulgent some. I’m a lifelong fan of stories. Growing up I would take photos of my Ghostbuster toys arranged in different poses and then write a story to go along with them. When I was a little older a show called The X-Files became a worldwide phenomenon and I became obsessed with it. Soon after the show completed it’s nine season run, I started looking for something to fill the void and I fell in love with cinema in general, which is what I ended up studying at university.

I have remained a lover of cinema ever, but over the past two or three years my frequent trips to the theatre have waned significantly. Not because I fell out of love with film, but life’s other demands got more demanding, leaving me with precious little free time. To be honest, it is now a rarity rather than the norm that I will see a new release in the cinema. Standard practice now is for me to catch up months later once the DVD is finally available for rental. Hopefully, life will be more accommodating of regular-ish trips to the cinema in 2012.

So of course, you shouldn’t expect this blog to be a catalogue of hot-of-the-presses film reviews. What it will be is a relatively random collection of essays. I chose the title Words & Pictures & Sounds because it rather conveniently leaves the door open to discuss pretty much anything I want, but there will hopefully be a thorough sense of consistency here. My aim when writing will be to provoke a thoughtful sense about the art being discussed. That doesn’t mean every entry will be an academic style essay, though. I’m a fan of top ten lists as much as the next person. I also hope to post some samples of my own art here. I am a writer (largely screenplays) but I want to start dabbling in prose. I intend to post some of my experiments on here occasionally too. I also hope to pursue other artistic endeavors which I can share here. I sometimes take photos I’m proud of. I used to make short films but haven’t done any in years. I used to paint even longer ago. I hope to start reengaging with these old pursuits and publicly display the fruits of my labor right here.

Finally, please let me assure you that there will likely be no consistency to my posting schedule. I don’t want a self-imposed routine of posting because I want every entry to be well considered and not rushed to post just to meet some imagined deadline. I want to do this because I want to do this. If I achieve an average of one post per week over the next year, then great. If not, then it’s not the end of the world. For that reason, I encourage you to subscribe to this blog at any time through any of the options available in the sidebar. You can also follow me on Twitter @DaiTexas where I’ll make it known whenever I have a new blog post. FYI, my tweets cover a much broader spectrum that this blog will. Favorite topics include film, soccer, boxing, politics, marketing, business and Scotch.

Thank you once again for visiting and thank you so much if you’ve managed to read through this entire piece of drivel. I promise the next post will be far more interesting.