Thursday, 19 February 2004
Not Every Picture Needs a Thousand Words
Considering my rather vitriolic entry that kicked off this very blog, I'm sure that some of you are wondering why I even bother. Maybe justifiably so.
Right before I went back to the States for the holidays, I was talking to a friend about how much I was looking forward to my trip. "Take a lot of pictures," she said, "and show them to me when you get back." I nodded, and didn't really give it much thought. Of course I'd take lots of pictures, and happily share them with her (in part because I was really interested in her; things didn't work out, but that's neither here nor there).
But you see, the funny thing is that I'm not the kind of person to "take a lot of pictures." I struggle to get through a single roll in a whole year, much less "a lot" during a short period. Besides, the people and places (save for a couple) were ones I had seen a thousand times before.
Surprisingly enough though, I did it. I went back, I visited my friends - and I took almost three rolls of pictures. That's "a lot" for me. I duly had them processed, got doubles, and brought back the second pair with me to France.
Ever since, they've sat in their plastic sack.
Sooner or later, maybe I'll show them to someone. I don't know, but that's not the point. You see, sooner or later that "someone" may be me. Someday, I'm going to be interested in who I saw and what I did - if only because at one time I already was interested. The important thing is that I actually took the photos, and now they wait for some occasion - happy, sad, silly, serious, frivolous or not - to be looked at again. Bubbles within the rushing waters of life.
Long before blogs came to be, but certainly very long after people had the idea of keeping personal journals, I occasionally wrote out my thoughts. In time, I did the same for my personal Web site. The fallacy of blogging is that writers believe they have an idea so original that no one could have ever conceived of it, yet it seems like everyone else wondered why the hell they needed to wait for the Web to come along.
For me, it was the possibility of sharing with someone else. If so, that was great: I'd connected with a reader I'd never met. Otherwise, at least I'd recorded my thoughts for myself. Many (most?) of them were pretty laughable - and there were (and are) few, no matter what form they took. On the other hand, a blog encourages a writer to record the short bursts of creativity when they strike. It's a new twist on an old technique, and I like it.
For my original site I called them "shower thoughts": the short moments of inspiration that appear in a flash, especially when you least expect them. I guess the term applies equally well to the thoughts that seemed great, but in retrospect really were nothing more than a hiccup. But it's all right to make mistakes, and I suppose I should applaud a tool that - in itself, or because of its novelty - encourages this kind of thing. Just don't confuse inspiration for brilliance.
So that's my typically roundabout way of explaining my thinking and its resulting presence here, in form of my blog. It's rough, it's trivial, but it can also be rewarding. Perhaps not so coincidentally, this very entry was in itself a "shower thought" - or rather, one that came to me on the short walk back home from the Metro.
"Take lots of pictures and show them to me." Here's a snapshot, one of many and no more special than most. Maybe there'll be some sort of story once many are strung together. Maybe even there'll be an audience of more than me.