THE ART OF MAKING MEMORIES
I feel like I’m constantly trying to capture moments as they’re happening to me.
Memory is such a strange and beautiful and anxiety-inducing idea. To sit in a moment that isn’t remarkable in any way, but it’s simple and easy and light, to suddenly be hit with the realization, I’m going to forget this one day. There’s nothing in this moment that warrants keeping it forever, other than it is mine and I’m having it right now, and one day soon, it’ll just slip from my recollection like silk being pulled from a light grip.
Sometimes it feels like a full time job, all of the ideas I have and options that exist for how you can make permanent the slide show of your past. Like one of those bulky overhead projectors that would get wheeled out in fourth grade science class to show you grainy, horrifying images of human anatomy. But instead, it’s these little clips that are gold and hazy and warm, and they filter across your mind with that satisfying click!
Frolicking through a lavender field that goes on forever, rolling hills of purple and that smooth, calm scent, click!
Barreling down a row of orange trees on a four wheeler, feeling the disheartening softness of the sand just before the ATV dumps us out like laundry, click!
Icy wind on your cheeks as we reach out for the first Icelandic snowflakes, the world beyond just a blank sheet, but for that one alarmingly yellow patch near the road, click!
And believe me, I’ve exhausted nearly all possible efforts for keeping them with me. There’s writing (a classic choice), but then you get into scrapbooking, photo album-ing, video-making. And then once you’ve reached the Advanced Level of Memory Keeping, you get into writing scripts, shorts, and novels loosely based on your adventures but embellished just enough that it’s just as magical as you remember it.
And industry understands this need, this pull, to keep our stories as permanent as we can. There are so many businesses making a profit on simple or novel ways to hold tight to what feels fleeting. And it begs the question, what is it? Is it that life just feels so temporary that we want to relive as much of it as possible? Is it the daunting reality that moments in our past are the best we might ever get? Or is it plain narcissism and the desire to watch ourselves over and over again in every mode, every emotion, scrutinizing the way our hair looked in that picture or the way one of our eyes squints when we laugh really hard or the way that no matter how much you try to pose, your arms always look like they don’t know what to do with themselves?
Perhaps I need to reframe; maybe it isn’t a desire to capture moments as they’re happening, but rather capture moments as they’re leaving. Either way, a lot of different companies have gotten lots of my money over the years in my quest to keep everything close to me. I know there’s a lesson in letting go and being present in here somewhere. How my experience is being influenced by the incessant need to capture something that hasn’t even happened yet, or may not even happen! It reminds me of one of my favorite movie scenes of all time from the brilliant movie The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. Ben Stiller and Sean Penn are having a beautiful denouement moment where Sean Penn’s character, a photographer, is finally given the chance to get a shot of an elusive snow leopard. Instead he decides to put his camera down and just experience the moment.
UGhhh. chef’s kiss.
See?! That’s exactly the thing I’m talking about! The author, the screenplay adapter, and everyone else who brought that scene to life was able to capture into 5 seconds the very pulp of the subject I’m obsessing over. So maybe I should have written a movie review on The Secret Life of Walter Mitty and called it a day. But some part of me thinks that James Thurber (original author of the short story) and all of the people after him who adapted this story into various forms were all searching for the same solace I am: to get a handle on this recalcitrant, unruly longing to live. And to document it.