This game we play with ourselves. The game of narcissism. The obsession with archiving our lives and the obsession with constantly finding ways to resist it. Many years back a friend introduced the idea of not clicking photographs on trips we made together. I was amused. Why does everything have to be photographed? she said. I remember that vacation. I told myself how liberating it was - not having to think about what to click, why to click, how to click, Click Click Click.
These memories are like photographs, another said. So for a month, I spent remembering my past as a series of pictures. Neither digital not film. No jpegs either. Raw? Maybe. Easy to edit. None of them were sepia as they tell us. Neither colour nor black and white (FYI - black and white are colours too)
Anyway. I made pictures out of memories. Then took some positives and made stories around them. Narrated stories. Narrated my self. Realized how Raw they were. We appear to appear before people through stories from Raw photographs.
Another agreed, the fad these days is to archive yourself but cleverly appear to not care. The bug struck me too. It helps in writing definitions of the self, you see. Definitions of yourself through labels you use to appear before good looking people. These labels are very important.
Obsessed about seeing ourselves in photographs. I can't remember a single time when I saw myself in a photograph and not wondered how good or bad I look. This obsession with looking good. Looking good before good looking people. The obsession of looking good in your own archive.
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| Photograph by the Man with the Camera |
Another agreed, the fad these days is to archive yourself but cleverly appear to not care. The bug struck me too. It helps in writing definitions of the self, you see. Definitions of yourself through labels you use to appear before good looking people. These labels are very important.
What do you do? he said. Nothing, she said. But what DO you do? I remember how weird yet brave that moment was before someone changed the subject. These moments should pause sometime. While everyone's frozen I should kiss them both.
I should also stop. Ranting at the cost of a pending reading. Brooding about the inevitable.
And the irony of having posted this on my blog. This archive of mine!
And the irony of having posted this on my blog. This archive of mine!
6 comments:
Black is the absence of colours.
I love your writing.
I used to be that person as well. Irritated with people for wanting to take pictures of everything because it was such an interruption, and because it is not necessary to document every single thing in the world. Now I just think oh I would like to have some pictures to remember the drunken revelry, when it does ensue.
And also my attitude to unflattering photographs has changed a bit, in the last couple of years as has my attitude to my face. Now I think, when standing in front of a camera, that about the most I can do is smile a bit wider, and blind everyone with my happiness, thereby distracting them from any perceivable flaws.
Ananda lets hope there is never an absence of colour. Look deep into the night sky watch it turn purple and try redeeming black :)
The latest picture of you with a duck in the bowl bears testimony to your new attitude. Happy phases of life are beautiful sp! hope to see you sometime soon :)
I used to have a crush on you. You still look good. ;-)
Very flattering! Thank you. I wish I could say the same about you!
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