“I like digital cameras, because they allow you to reminisce immediately.
‘Oh, we were so young.’”
– Demetri Martin
Play college party bingo, and if Friday night unfolds on a PBR can, a red cup, a boy in a crumpled collared shirt sidling up to dancing sophomores, and a girl with a palm-sized camera seizing photo opportunities within minutes of hitting the scene, you win. I’d always been privately irritated by people replacing memories with photography, but very possibly this is just one of many pitfalls that the hideously un-photogenic are prone to and not a true-blue philosophical issue, and probably photos are totally apropos for settings where your memory is meant to take a few knocks throughout the course of the evening. Nonetheless, I didn’t like it. I didn’t get it. Why collect photos? Why store ‘em up, like a back-up brain? It’s not ticket back to that place, after all; it’s a snapshot, not a sudden surge of coarse Irish sidewalk below your toes, not a coffee cup for loose change in a three-fingered man’s hand outside of Philadelphia’s subway system, and so just a mean copy of what it was like to be there, a Xerox, a scrapbook ghost without any of the sensorial substance. So much worse if it’s just a record of business as usual! Why bother – can’t you remember them? And if you can’t, is it worth it, to snatch at something that won’t stick? Just seemed like hoarding. A bad habit to be excised by the conscientious remember-er.
As I said: this how I’d always been.
Dad and I did a whirlwind tour of America en route to a philosophy summer seminar in Boulder, Colorado. Note: this is quite a trip from Pennsylvania, but well worth it, if you can hack ten-hour driving days for a week or so. On our way, we hit: the Badlands, in South Dakota; the Center of the United States of America (Including Hawaii and Alaska But Probably Not Puerto Rico), which, incidentally, is also in South Dakota; several Native American reservations; Yellow Stone National Park; Route 212, the most beautiful stretch of highway I’ve ever seen, which included a drive up a mountain; and at last big beautiful Boulder itself. Dad was always shutterbugging, and needed my help in the middle of Yellowstone to upload all those damn photos to his computer, having run out of room.
He had photos of Ireland on there. I think the term is poleaxed: to be as if one has just been struck by a poleax. It just … felled me. And though I know your posts have been beautiful poetic and photographic renderings, I want to tender out my own contribution in a slightly different vein: tourism. You can’t really walk a mile in any body’s moccasins, you know? Empathy and imagination are tools, not transportation. But some of the places I’ve been are beautiful, even if my description can’t measure up, and I’d love to share them with you, through these lovely little digital artifacts. Please click here.
1 comment:
Sophia! Inspiring photographs and brilliant writing! I eagerly anticipate more posts! (P.S. Feel free to post as much as you want here, including large numbers of photos. If you're worried about space, simply click the "Insert Jump Break" button in the toolbar and everything you post under the dotted-line will only be seen when expanded by pressing a "Read more" button.)
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