Memory is a slippery thing. It flows around moments in life in a stream, conforming to the needs of the moment. One of my abiding interests is pictures and how they work, and it’s a cliché to refer to images as aide-mémoire. A better description, from John Willats, is that pictures are props in a game of make believe. Photographs present an interesting puzzle because they usually bear an indexical relation with reality, pointing at a set of relationships in a specific moment. It is in this sense, and this sense only, that photographs can be said to be “truth,” or better, “proof.” I took this picture of myself, shortly after I started making photographs as a part of my life. I can narrow down the date between February and June 1975 because it was taken with a camera borrowed from school. I have a journal that recorded that I purchased my first camera in June of 1975. This was not taken by that camera.
I was fascinated with the multiplicity of ways that photographs could be manipulated, and was trying to experiment with multiple exposures by winding the film back and exposing it. Of course, I screwed it up and didn’t recognize that you had to move the film an exact amount and keep the camera oriented in the same direction. The upside down lightbulb near my head is the result. Although this strip of photographs is manipulated, there are some interesting bits to me that reach back to some deeper memories about who this person is that I am looking at. It seems like it’s many lifetimes ago.
Most people probably won’t notice the two deodorant sticks in the headboard behind me. Bakersfield was a hot place, and it seemed like no amount of attention would stop me from stinking like a pig. That was a different me; it’s either a change in latitude or body chemistry, but BO has become a lesser concern. I am, however, still a book piler. I have lots of them, and they seem to grow even after I try to resolve and put things away. This photograph was the only one I printed at the time, as I recall. I liked the glowing flare spot by my head. I was a sucker for things that hinted at dreams and dreaming. Maybe it was just the dirty brown reality of the valley that made me so hungry for a way out. I’m a bit nostalgic for the row of books on the other side.
I was a proud member of the classics book club. I remember reading Plato’s Republic, lots of plays by Sophocles, and so on though I suspect I really didn’t understand as much of it as I thought I did. Zooming in on the spines of the books I see lots of works of environmental activism, Carlos Casteneda, plenty of almanacs and such. There were fewer screens, and they held a lot less information. Books and magazines were the main way to fuel a dream. That, and music.
It has been over a year since I last wrote anything here. It has been a long time since I last thought of dreams, and wondered what I wanted out of life. Too many rocks to wrap the memories around, too many lifetimes both real and imagined to dwell in any one place too long. I remember the advice that Marylyn Parins once gave me, regarding grasping literature and literary history. Sometimes you have to dive in the middle and swim both ways.
