Used To: The Virtue and Vice of Remembering

In moments of self-awareness, I can acknowledge that one of the reasons why I gravitated so strongly to photography is that I love to remember.   In moments of self-honesty, however, I can also admit that not all of my remembering is good for me.  I can’t remember (har har) what set this train of thought into motion last fall, but I have been thinking about this in the context of lots of things going on in my life since then.  Lots of questions come up.  When do I transition from fondly reminiscing about the past to mentally setting up house in it?   When does trying to reference a lesson learned transition into reliving and wallowing in a negative experience?  How often is history rewritten in my head?    Does it all keep me from moving forward?   And, of course…why?  I made a list of what comes up for me when I think about the past.  Ideas about myself, my childhood, my relationships.  There are plenty of dark spaces in those thoughts.  However, this series is meant to depict associations that are mostly joyful for me, although I have both positive and negative associations with them all.  I’m hopeful that this exercise might provide a segue into examining the shadowy corners.

 

 

 

 

 


 

 

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  • LOVE this series. LOVE.

  • steph

    love love love the mouthpiece. i have, to this day, never heard you play. but i love that you love to remember, as i do too. and i’ve asked myself similar questions. it’s hard for me to know where that line is between remembering and regressing, and i find that on any given day, the same memory might affect me completely differently. sometimes that memory is easy, just factual history, while other days it’s heavy with emotion. i think my emotional response to a memory, especially one that isn’t consistently light and fun, largely reflects what else is going on in my life, and the danger for me is when i let my current thoughts/situation influence my perception of the so-called reality of the memory. suddenly i fail to see all the shadows, and focus only on that tiny glint of sun that at the time didn’t offer any light, warmth, or life. but in my altered perception, i’ve glorified it.

    without our memory, our lives lose meaning. so even though remembering can sometimes keep us in a rut, i’d rather wallow in a memory than have nothing in my memory at all. and one thing is certain – everything changes, so the wallowing simply cannot be interminable.

    i think you’re very self-aware. and very vunderwool.

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