The Beauty of Briefly Imagined

We are all story tellers.   All of us work every day to perfect and tell a unique and extremely important story - that story is the story of our lives.  We are able to tell these stories through the memories we craft.  There is the story of the time we laughed so hard we cried, the story when we sat by a campfire watching the stars chase the horizon, the story that silences the crowd when we share the time we were our most vulnerable selves in front of the person we loved.

What makes us tell these stories the way that we do?  What molds our memories, etching them into a wrinkle in our brain to recall at a future time?  How long will these memories remain in tact?  Are our memories accurate?  Is accuracy even important?


MY CURRENT STORY

Last week I quit my job as a VP at a global consulting and analytics company with no clear next step, only a strong feeling that it was time for a change and that I wanted to embark

The Turning Point, 2016

towards something more creative than my number crunching past.  I made enough to live more than comfortably, had flexibility in my job and where I could work from, lead two teams of people I cared deeply for through a variety of challenges, but at the end of the day, I wasn't coming home satisfied.  It wasn't all roses mind you, there were a handful of negatives with challenging stakeholders and leadership calls that I disagreed with, but largely, it was a good job with generally great people and it gave me a cushy and enjoyable lifestyle.  So what happened?


THINGS WERE DECENT, SO I QUIT.

Things were decent.  Not good, not great...just mediocre, and if there is anything I have learned from watching people succumb to mediocracy, it's that growth is not an outcome.  This isn't my first time leaping into the unknown.  In fact, six years ago I started this blog after quitting.  Circumstances were somewhat similar - both times I had a ticking time bomb requiring me to make swift changes.  In the summer of 2011, I was in Australia, living steps away from the Sydney Harbor Bridge in a renovated church from the 1800s with a red long board I'd take on the weekends by ferry over to Manly Beach to catch some waves.  It was a cruisy, dream come true, but alas I wasn't seeing an opportunity for growth and was not as happy as I thought I could be given the circumstances.  I'm not one to sit around and wait for good things to happen, so I decided to make a change and quit.  And when you quit your job on a work visa, you have 30 days to get the F out.

The swift exodus gave way to an epic, scary, and magical 9 months of self discovery.  I traveled solo in Asia, spent 10 days in a Vipassana retreat in the middle of Indonesia not talking and barely eating to better understand my body, hiked mornings and afternoons through blanketed snow trails in a forest contemplating my roots near my home in Ohio, and ventured into the American Southwest picking up mountain biking in the desert and learning what dry 110 degree heat feels like.  Similarly today, I have just a few weeks to get out of my rented cottage in the mountains and figure out where and what next.  It's almost as wild this time around except I now have six more years of confidence behind me, whispering in my ear that despite my dad's mostly sarcastic concerns for me going on welfare, that I am a grown woman and can handle the outcome of my decisions.  This time more than last, I have no doubt I will land on my feet.

SOMETIMES YOU NEED TO LIGHT A FIRE UNDER YOUR OWN ASS.  

Backyard Photoshoot, circa 1995

So, I am setting out to do what exactly?  One, get out of the swamps of mediocracy and complacency so as not to stay stagnate.  Two, I am seeking to get in touch with my creative backbone.  My mom is a photographer, and I grew up in front of the camera.  I have fond memories of doing photo shoots with her on days I'd visit the studio or on weekends at our house and then wondering how the pictures would develop.  There were days in between the shoot and getting the pictures back from Walgreens, hours of anticipation and curiosity spent letting my imagination venture into what those shots back by the fence would turn out like. It was a hobby my mom and I shared, and I loved it.  Today I find myself channeling those memories through my own self portraits, thanks to the magic of timers and iPhones.   Photography and self portraits are my creative outlet where I feel like I'm using my entire brain and it reinforces that connection to my mom that we have been able to maintain since I was born.  To this day, I send her the shots when I get my creative juices flowing, she gives me her critique, and we have this beautiful moment that takes me back to standing over her shoulder as she separated the doubles when we would get the photos back...she always got doubles.  Doubles of me, doubles of the flowers in our yard, just...doubles.

But there are no more doubles.  Creating memories isn't the same process that it was in 1995. There is no longer a delay.  There is no longer the time left in between to contemplate what you would've done differently had you not run out of film.  There is no more time spent with your imagination to ponder the outcome.

Dressing Room, 2016

I recently was fortunate to watch Simon McBurney's, The Encounter, a magical sensory experience that takes you into the deep Amazon in the early 70's through the accounts of National Geographic's photographer, Loren McIntyre.  Everyone should see it.  That's all I'll say regarding the main idea of the play, with the aside of my point that in the performance, Simon has a moment where he shares with the audience the numerous amount of pictures he has of his daughter on his phone - literally hundreds and hundreds...and to no surprise, she is only 4 years old.  He goes on to tell us his concerns that his daughter now recalls herself in these recent memories through these photographs versus her actual memory of the moment, and posits the question to the audience:  what real memories do we have now that our lives are being captured and instantly saved over with this digital memory?   What are we doing to the creative process of forming our memories now that we instantly capture everything?

Rocky Mountains, 2017

HOW WE CAPTURE OUR MEMORIES SHAPE OUR STORY

In parallel, another thought has surfaced.  One must evaluate the critical role our imaginations play in how we build our memories and form our reality.  The imagination can morph our memory in ways where what actually happened isn't what is captured as the memory.   For example, a book arrives on your doorstep.  You did not order this book, but there it is, in a nice package about a topic you have a great affinity towards.  How must it have arrived?  Why, this lovely book is most certainly a present from your lover!  How thoughtful, how sweet!  This story you tell yourself makes you very happy and you are flooded with positive feelings, only to learn a couple days later that the book was in fact not a gift, but simply one your lover had ordered from themselves.  Your imagination created an entirely different reality, which you logged easily and without even realizing you were doing it.

Through capturing memories by film photography, you are left to your imagination to what the picture will look like for a significant amount of time before you see it.  In those moments, how are we creating and recording that memory?  The memory has room to blossom and develop, and can be left to dance with your imagination.  There is no immediate persuasion from the 2D visual staring back at you.  That visual after all, doesn't challenge you to capture the scent, the sounds, the feeling, the objects beyond the 4x6 or 3x3.   It is in that moment alone with our imagination that I fear we may be starting to lose something really special with regards to how we capture our memories.

The conversation between our observations and our imagination is like a long dance, a dance that could very well be developing and driving the permanence of our memories.  If we take the time to use all of our senses and describe this dance in writing, what will that do to the permanence, the richness of our memory?  By capturing that moment through words instead of visuals, you are forced to recreate the world in that moment, pulling out the most important pieces to you, to recreate this moment for your future self.  There are bits and pieces that will not be captured, there are pieces that may be embellished to draw your brain back to the feeling you want to evoke - the fullness, the warmth, the terror.  These are the feelings that will conjure the words that will one day tell your story.  How important are these words to your story?


THE PROJECT:  FORMATIVE, FORGETTABLE, & BRIEFLY IMAGINED

I am an anthropologist at heart, and what makes people do the things they do fascinates me.  As I was starting to drift asleep last night, I was stuck on the idea of wanting to see the memories people would capture through a film camera and writing.  Would people feel a deeper sense of connection with these memories from having to be selective with how they spend this film, how would they write these moments?  How would they recall them after?  Would it be a better story?  Is there fear or insecurity from not being able to see the photo and it's instant permanence?  Would these have a different memory than their instant digital captured cousins?

I am titling this project 'Formative, Forgettable, & Briefly Imagined' because I think that's what our memories represent at their core.  There is something special I like about the idea of the participant capturing something and not being able to see it right away and let the dance with their imagination form their memory.  There is also something very beautiful about writing the story of that photo and having that be a foundation of your memory as well versus just using your sight to record it.

Transformed, 2017

Participants will have 14 days to capture the 14 formative, forgettable and briefly imagined moments.  Each time a photo is captured, the participant should write however much they wish about what they were capturing and how it relates to the theme, with some variation in length of writing from photo to photo.  After the 14 days are up, participants will send back their photos along with their writings to me for development.  In time, I will send the photographers back their photos along with their writings so they may compare their current memories to their captured memories.  For those interested in participating, I'll supply the first 10 disposable cameras, but I welcome all to participate if you're interested.   My goal is to create a deeper and richer understanding of how much our imagination and writing can change influence our memory vs a brief visual of that moment in time, and give participants a reason to contemplate the investment we make in how we record our memories and the story that allows us to tell.   We are all story tellers.  Tell me your story.