Photographic Memories

Photographic Memories

What are photographs but memories frozen in time? A moment relived and replayed only in the mind. A reflection on happier times, youth long past, beauty long gone, and a flower faded, and opportunities lost.

Back Down Memory Lane by Minnie Riperton

I stumbled on this photograph
It kinda made me laugh
It took me way back
Back down memory lane

I see the happiness… I see the pain
Where am I… back down memory lane

I see us standing there
Such a happy happy pair
Love beyond compare
look-a-there look-a-there

The way you held me… no one could tell me
That love would die… why oh why

Why did I have to find this photograph
Thought I had forgot the past
But now I’m slippin’ fast
Back down memory lane

I feel the happiness… I feel the pain
Here am I… back down memory lane
I’m in the sunshine… I’m in the rain
I thought it was over…here I go again.

The way you held me. No one could tell me.
That love would die.

I don’t wanna go traveling down
Faster than the speed of sound
Back down memory lane
Be still my foolish heart
Don’t let this feelin’ start
Back down memory lane
I don’t wanna go… save me save me

The impermanence of time. Life is transitory in nature. I can view my father’s memories but they will never become mine. Even my childhood captured in Kodak pictures fades further into the recesses of my mind as time goes on. Even those memories become selective and undergo transformation, sometimes slightly embellished when seen through rose colored glasses. Is there such a thing as collective memory? Maybe. Maybe not. Three siblings can have three differing views of a mutually shared experience each like the prisms in a kaleidoscope.  Each mind makes its own unique photographic memories.

Salvador Dali’s, “The Persistence of Memory with its melting clocks and watches is a surrealist view of the transfiguration of time upon memory.

The camera rudely holds hostage a figment of the viewers’ imagination. There is no knowledge. No learning in the frozen image of falsity.  Where and how is the heart and soul of the painting reveled within a lower level picture. Within the lens of a device neither heard nor thought about five hundred years ago. Unless one has studied the expertise contained within the painting. In no way is the art given its due reverence or respect.

I see Christ carrying the cross, but where or how does a futile camera reveal the pathos and emotion in this second grade image. Only an allusion of what should be. Will the dilettante photographer with his fancy high end camera locate the essence contained within a 500 year old artwork? Will they fall down at the feet of the common 2nd class idol trapped within the camera? Can you with your 21st century stereopticon confer status upon ancient antiquities? And once transference between camera and computer is completed will it just join the million other false prophets cast out over cyberspace. Away with you false worshippers molding your gods to suit your needs. All you can produce are fake gods of selective memory.

The Shrine of the House of Order is reduced to a carnival atmosphere and a den of chaos by heathen invaders. Irreverent raiders try to measure aesthetic beauty in terms of monetary value. They descended as twittering stammering blobs of undigested fat cells moving in a helter skelter fashion across an eternity of myriad diverse cultures, history, grace and elan reducing what is viewed in terms of its existence as a commodity. Eating, defecating, urinating, uninspired zombies seeking to wrench eons of civilization with a device that whose only use screams out, “Hey look where I was at!”  Everything in life has value but does everything in life have a price? False gods making out of themselves monuments to the Impermanence of Life. What price Beauty? Does Beauty have a price and who decides what that price is? How is it measured? True appreciation of beauty cannot penetrate the intracranial darkness of their thick prehistoric skulls.

Which stairway to Heaven are you climbing today?

Stairway to Heaven

Led Zepplin-Stairway to Heaven

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