Thanks, Technology. We appreciate the assists when we start our car with a button instead of a key, or warm something up in the microwave (unless it’s frozen and then we have to do that thing with the spoon where we wait for the glacier in the center to thaw just enough that we can use a tablespoon to break it apart like a polar ice shelf of marinara and then hope the blazing hot moat on the outside helps to melt the now free floating boulders of sauce), or use a remote control for our tv (after we use the app on our smartphone to find it). Making difficult tasks easier is technology’s bailiwick.
But technology rarely makes great things better. Delicious food does not become more delicious, hilarious jokes are not funnier, clothing is no more impressive (except for Velcro™, which is an unqualified miracle).
Technology nearly always delivers less expensive and more efficient options, but the old adage remains - although every product and service wants to be GOOD, FAST, and CHEAP, they can only offer two of those at a time.
I thought that a photograph was the perfect repository for a memory - a physical object that captured a moment and held it gently for future reflection. But when I looked at many of the photos in our storage box I didn’t immediately remember any detail of the scenes within. Look, there’s a park. Oooh, a hotel. Wow, I’m young…that’s neat… look at all that hair.
Stack and stacks of pieces of glossy paper with random images on them - precious only to me because for some reason that scene was important enough to spend a frame of actual film to capture, and then take that film somewhere for processing and wait a number of days to retrieve the prints. That’s effort.
The best of these pictures hold not only time, but emotion. It’s not a picture of something I DID, but a way that I felt. Look, there’s that park where I won the three-legged-race on Field Day in third grade and that red-headed girl smiled at me and said congratulations. Oooh, that’s the famous hotel that rock and roll people stayed at that has the guitar shop where I finally found my mandolin. Wow, I really DID have a lot of hair.
And now, the emotions I felt back then resonate with the emotions the photo currently evokes. Look, I admit that I could use more exercise. Oooh, I’ve gotta dig my mandolin out of the closet and play more. Wow, I should buy more hats.
In the world of music, as the fidelity got higher, the physical music got farther away. Records could be played with a needle and a paper cone, but they were heavy and fragile. Then came cassette tapes: lighter and much more clear, but dependent on electronic magnets (and we couldn’t just listen to any song we wanted without fast forwarding). Then CDs - even lighter and clearer, but we couldn’t hear our music without computers and a laser. And now we can hear any song ever recorded instantly with NO WEIGHT AT ALL and PERFECT SOUND, but there’s nothing at all to touch and our access depends on corporate satellites in space.
Our photographs have followed suit - housed in a digital repository so admittedly out of our grasp that it’s actually called “the cloud”; instantly sharable but ethereal, dependent on machines we sort of understand and subscription agreements and data farms and a billion dollars of miracles that are out of our control.
Or you could print your pictures and put them in a wicker IKEA box. But then you have to buy paper and ink which is expensive and they take up so much space… I hear ya. Sorting through these I feel a bit like I should follow Marie Kondo’s advice and throw away any picture that does not “spark joy”.
But they all kind of do spark joy: even the one’s I don’t fully remember hold some kind of feeling, just for me. Anyway, these were never images to really show off to anyone: at the time they were taken, each photo was destined to be seen only by whoever I showed it to, and to be honest, I’ve never known that many people.
And it’s not like these are pristine high resolution snapshots of amazing salads I’ve eaten that I’d share online anyway. Who else would ever be interested in that adobe village of cardboard and plaster that I made as a book report? Who cares that I played Algernon in “The Importance of Being Earnest” in 10th grade, complete with a mustache and (very sketchy) British accent? Just me. Life was a little slower, but things were pretty good.
Look! Oooh! Wow!
Book Report.
Algernon & Merriman & Jack
