Como Park Conservatory, the fern room
Krista and I went to visit the gardens at the Conservatory in Como Park yesterday afternoon, and we took some pictures. I do that a lot. A guy was passing by some people taking turns making pictures of each other; he volunteered to take a picture of the entire group. Some people are nice like that; people volunteer like that when they see Krista and I out shooting pictures together too, although we never really take them up on it. We generally make our own pictures.
Talking to Kyle Wyner (the infamous truck driver in the video for “Ballad of Bill”) and Rex on the phone last night, some interesting issues were raised. Kyle was pissed that no one bothered to tell him about the tribute concert (where his face was on the screen every five minutes) for Slim. We got to talking about the people we’ve lost in the last few years and the impact that their absence has. Athough we really don’t know each other, our friends overlap in bizarre ways. I didn’t know that he used to date Suzy, for example. I’ve met Kyle several times over the years, and he has a unique take on things—I enjoy it every time we talk.
Rex and I were talking earlier in the day, also, regarding the way that the recording of events changes your memory of them—if someone produces a video or takes pictures at a place you were at, you tend to remember the media representation of the event more than your own physical, sensory memory of it. Trusting someone to tell your story is something that shouldn’t be taken lightly. When you hand someone else the camera, you’re implicitly trusting them to be fair to the scene before them—a trust that shouldn’t be violated. Though technically the person making the recording has the rights to it, copies of copies cannot be copyrighted. No one owns the scene in front of the camera either.
No one can know the full picture. To try to “surround” the event takes more than one perspective. We talked a lot about doing something about that, hopefully soon. A person’s memory should not be left to fade after it ceases to be “newsworthy.”
