The Pictorial Paradigm Distortion

First off, I’ve re-read my past couple of posts and noticed the overwhelming amount of emo-ness in them. Not that anyone reads this utter BS of a blog, but I’ll try to cut down on the boo-hoos and bitching (unless, of course, that’s what you like in this blog. If so, I’ll just banter on about the misfortunes in my life. You sadist.) 

I can't really explain my thoughts on this quite well, so, please, at least try to make some sense of this incoherent mumbo-jumbo. But without further ado:

We’ve all done lots of things in our life. Some petty, some important. Sometimes, during the activity, whether it be a party, work, school or a regular social gathering, some people will pull out their cameras and start shooting pictures of the merry united band of guys and gals, and later upload it to a (photo) site, sometimes Flickr or Picasa webalbums, but mostly they put the result of the good times on Facebook.

It’s happened to me lots of times before, and, just now, it happened again. What has, you ask? Well, up until yesterday, my memories of an evening of over a week ago were just in my own memories, and everything I recalled is what would ever be left of that night. Now, however, some photos have been uploaded to Facebook, and I got a whole new perspective to the evening (as well as a reminder not to look like a drug addict when people are waving cameras around. But that’s beside the point.) Now, own memories coexist with, or have been replaced by photos taken at that moment in my life.

This isn’t the first time: many of my memories have been washed away by time; a rule of thumb is the further back, the fuzzier the memory. The perpetual necessary exception to the rule is when photos or videos are taken, because then, I get a clearer recollection of what happened around the time they were taken, with the rest of the period remaining fuzzy.

What I’m trying to say here is that, because of photos, whole perceptions of what happened at many singular points in my life has been altered, for better or for worse. Yes, I know I don’t have the best memory or storytelling abilities (and, as a result, sadly, frequently I can’t share past experiences very well), but it’s freaky to me how one photo can bring back a whole myriad of emotions, memories and feelings of a time long gone. Like a modern sort of Madeleine. Or a veritable window into lost time. An everlasting pitch for legacy.