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more than words
Oct. 11th, 2004 10:29 pmI have been able to go for years without thinking about pictures. When I went on short vacations by myself, it didn't occur to me to bring a camera. When I travelled with friends (or when friends were in the room when I was packing), saying, "are you crazy? going there without a camera?" So I got the little disposable cameras, and couldn't figure out what pictures I was supposed to take -- there weren't any I wanted to take, or that I cared to look at afterwards.
I never used to want any pictures of me, either. (I'd fade into the background when pictures were being taken. Let the picture-takers focus on people who care about such things, who appreciate it.) They aren't useful memory-aids, and they don't share what I want to share. Now it feels very strange that I want, really *want* several different pictures of myself. It feels
strange for me. Maybe it's just bringing me closer to human-normal. (er, I mean normal for humans of this time and place, where so many people feel that nothing *really* happens unless someone captures it on film.)
At work, every department has just been assigned a bulletin board, which we are supposed to fill with something. My department can't fill it with anything about what we're actually doing, because we aren't supposed to broadcast our research to the world until we can patent it. We aren't supposed to even say what problems we're working on, until marketing can announce we're going to solve Y and Z on date Q+n. (Less embarrassing if nobody knew we were trying to solve X,Y,and Z on date Q.) Anyhow, there will be a composite pictures of all of us, with vague descriptions of what we do. The picture they're planning to use is appallingly unflattering, taken at the end of my first day of work, when I was exhausted, in agony, and being deliberately taunted into rage. I'm welcome to have it replaced with some other jpg...if I could find a better picture of myself. But I don't have other pictures of myself. They're going to put this thing where nobody can get coffee without seeing it, and it just feels more humiliating than I can deal with.
I've also been fretting about some old pictures of me as a child. Before my brother's wedding, he had asked my mother to select some pictures of him from the old albums. He and his fiance were making a video to show at the rehearsal dinner, and they wanted action shots showing him growing up, showing his hobbies. (This was almost impossible, for a boy who liked music, drawing, and puzzles. And a photographer [my father] who liked to take his time setting up good shots.) The video was adorable, cutting between the little boy discovering the piano and the little girl learning to dance, showing them growing up and finding each other.
I found some pictures of me in those old albums. I might not have thought of them for 20-30 years, but now I want them. There are people I want to share them with (especially that picture of me at 5, looking rather like I look now, reading a curious george book to a doll.) My mother wanted to keep all the original prints, and she's going to a lot of trouble to reorganize all the albums as soon as she can find the time. But she offered to let me have copies of as many pictures as I wanted, so I sorted out a few dozen that she was going to have copied for me, before I came back into town for the wedding. These are old color pictures, some of them taken or developed in non-optimal conditions. She didn't want to digitize them. She wanted color-corrected prints, which she was willing to pay for. She didn't realize that the camera store (I almost wrote that as "photo shop") would digitize the images she brought them, manipulate them electronically, and print them out again. Despite the rush of preparations for the wedding, she went to the camera store for me to pick up the pictures...and was appalled to discover they had been digitized. I couldn't claim the blurry, color-distorted, prints, saying, "they're better than nothing." They had to go back to the store, and my mother is still looking for a store that can make good copies, the "right" way. I don't even know what the right way is, considering that we're talking about color film.
It's been 5 weeks, and I'm starting to doubt that it will ever happen. I didn't think I cared this much. I care about the people I want to show the pictures. (Not that I want my mother to suspect how much I care, National Coming-Out Day, or not.) They've already heard about my childhood, and (with one exception) they don't need pictorial evidence to make my past real. It's all about wanting to share my life with someone, and wanting to share my past, too. I love words, and my past, my memory, is mostly words. But I've come to realize that it's not all words.
I never used to want any pictures of me, either. (I'd fade into the background when pictures were being taken. Let the picture-takers focus on people who care about such things, who appreciate it.) They aren't useful memory-aids, and they don't share what I want to share. Now it feels very strange that I want, really *want* several different pictures of myself. It feels
strange for me. Maybe it's just bringing me closer to human-normal. (er, I mean normal for humans of this time and place, where so many people feel that nothing *really* happens unless someone captures it on film.)
At work, every department has just been assigned a bulletin board, which we are supposed to fill with something. My department can't fill it with anything about what we're actually doing, because we aren't supposed to broadcast our research to the world until we can patent it. We aren't supposed to even say what problems we're working on, until marketing can announce we're going to solve Y and Z on date Q+n. (Less embarrassing if nobody knew we were trying to solve X,Y,and Z on date Q.) Anyhow, there will be a composite pictures of all of us, with vague descriptions of what we do. The picture they're planning to use is appallingly unflattering, taken at the end of my first day of work, when I was exhausted, in agony, and being deliberately taunted into rage. I'm welcome to have it replaced with some other jpg...if I could find a better picture of myself. But I don't have other pictures of myself. They're going to put this thing where nobody can get coffee without seeing it, and it just feels more humiliating than I can deal with.
I've also been fretting about some old pictures of me as a child. Before my brother's wedding, he had asked my mother to select some pictures of him from the old albums. He and his fiance were making a video to show at the rehearsal dinner, and they wanted action shots showing him growing up, showing his hobbies. (This was almost impossible, for a boy who liked music, drawing, and puzzles. And a photographer [my father] who liked to take his time setting up good shots.) The video was adorable, cutting between the little boy discovering the piano and the little girl learning to dance, showing them growing up and finding each other.
I found some pictures of me in those old albums. I might not have thought of them for 20-30 years, but now I want them. There are people I want to share them with (especially that picture of me at 5, looking rather like I look now, reading a curious george book to a doll.) My mother wanted to keep all the original prints, and she's going to a lot of trouble to reorganize all the albums as soon as she can find the time. But she offered to let me have copies of as many pictures as I wanted, so I sorted out a few dozen that she was going to have copied for me, before I came back into town for the wedding. These are old color pictures, some of them taken or developed in non-optimal conditions. She didn't want to digitize them. She wanted color-corrected prints, which she was willing to pay for. She didn't realize that the camera store (I almost wrote that as "photo shop") would digitize the images she brought them, manipulate them electronically, and print them out again. Despite the rush of preparations for the wedding, she went to the camera store for me to pick up the pictures...and was appalled to discover they had been digitized. I couldn't claim the blurry, color-distorted, prints, saying, "they're better than nothing." They had to go back to the store, and my mother is still looking for a store that can make good copies, the "right" way. I don't even know what the right way is, considering that we're talking about color film.
It's been 5 weeks, and I'm starting to doubt that it will ever happen. I didn't think I cared this much. I care about the people I want to show the pictures. (Not that I want my mother to suspect how much I care, National Coming-Out Day, or not.) They've already heard about my childhood, and (with one exception) they don't need pictorial evidence to make my past real. It's all about wanting to share my life with someone, and wanting to share my past, too. I love words, and my past, my memory, is mostly words. But I've come to realize that it's not all words.
