Finding the right lens

I have been thinking about things a lot recently. Things happen. We had a birth in the family and I am now a grandfather. We had the loss of a very dear and close friend, which has hit me harder than I thought it would - telegraphed though as it was. And I also feel I may be at a transition point (again) with respect to what I want to do with photography and how it can give my thoughts some expression and presence.
It isn't melancholia that has brought about this point of inflection, rather the continued concentrated focus on photography and art that, combined with these personal events, have maybe precipitated the process a little earlier than it might have occurred otherwise. This minor crisis of confidence centres around whether I should consider the exercises/assignments as purely technical requirements that I should prove mastery of or, whether I should start/continue with the artistic journey that I have been on, albeit falteringly, for the best part of my life? I am inclined to throw caution to the wind and try and let go. I feel that the exercises are designed to try and instil some common currency into the students, some common terms of reference, some common language that can be used in the middle and later stages of the course, and if so I think that it might affect my language and possibly inhibit my expression.

This image of the pavement in Dubrovnik was taken to provide stock for the first assignment, but also knowing that it could be used as part of the Elements of Design - which theoretically I am working on now. In fact, I had taken enough images in Dubrovnik to cover off both assignments and did the same in Montenegro a few days later. However, whist I can find the images to suit the "bill" I am resisting the temptation to "cover-off" the assignment, rattle off the exercises with some array of tedious images because they won't have any resonance with what I want to feel about photography. I started to get frustrated during the trip to Dubrovnik and Montenegro in that I found an underlying echo of the the relatively recent wars, the latent animosity that lies barely submerged in the psyche of the peoples and the buildings - pocked as they are with bullet damage. But I wasn't brave enough to let that determine my eyesight. I did start (here I am trying to ameliorate my conscience) to record some of the collateral damage in the architecture, but it was too little too late. I did start to comment on the role of state and church in the preface to the first assignment, but I had no comment back from my tutor on the relevance of my observations and I clearly let it slip - pragmatism winning out on the day I suppose; as to do more with that subject would probably incur a great deal of time in the Balkans.

I am inclined to consider my "subject" to be the village that I live in - I have had some conversations in the Forums around this and I have considered only one other subject. My other "subject" would/could possibly be my father. Both subjects will have memory associations, my father died of a brain tumour when he was 69. The village's memory will have to be researched and then associated with the present, much in the same way as using my predecessor in that my relationship with him was not one that I would wish inflicted on any father/son combination. I see too much of Turgenev's Bazarov from "Father and Son" in me and I do not see in this course some effort of reconciliation - however that weight will bare down on whatever I try and create.
The photo of the dandelion - taken within the village - initially with a view to EoD's "round" suggests something that the village has become to mean to me today. I have been in the village for 26 years or so, our sons, whilst born elsewhere, came here as babes and know this place as their home, their anchor. Our life here is supportive and supported, connected and whilst not homogenous, its leaks are acceptable . The dandelions "show" of interconnectedness, of mutual support and reliance, of a determination to hold together in a multi-stranded way against the elements. I appreciate that the analogy may break down when the wind blows the seed heads to their fortune, but the dandelion has evolved to try and make that determination under it's own terms and our son's have left the village now under their own terms, their seed having been sown now producing more sons - and maybe daughters as well. Who knows.
This isn't some bucolic vision of middle England, Middle Barton isn't the warm toned idyll of Downton Abbey, but maybe, just maybe it could be the germinating seed of inspiration that I need to help me shake off this anchor around my neck.