Monday, December 3, 2012

Picture This (If You Can)


Those who know me also know I enjoy taking pictures.  Photos help me (and occasionally others) remember a scene, a suspended point in time, a memory.  For me, taking a photograph is merely a personal experience – not a competition to come up with the best pixels money can buy.

It occurred to me recently, and perhaps belatedly, there are scenes occurring daily in my life that are essentially impossible to photograph with any meaning.  Most of you would say books also fall into this category (and I would agree) -- although the motion picture industrial complex continually begs to differ.

For example, picture this if you can:
  •  A 64+ year old white-haired male watching a show on his 55” Sony 1080p HD TV
  • The show is a fuzzy PBS rerun of the Ed Sullivan’s 1966 rock ‘n roll performances dating back to the viewer’s high school graduation days -- and does not utilize the entire screen's lamdscape
  •  The viewer is frugally sipping boxed Merlot from a treasured wine glass while sitting in a leather chair normally reserved for his BBL who is off visiting relatives in Illinois which makes him all the more introspective
  • While comfortable, the viewer is unconsciously conscious of his left side clumsiness that still resides after an unfortunate accident which occurred several years earlier by a driver under the influence of an illegal substance -- necessitating a certain due diligence when the viewer handles his wine glass  
  •  The viewer wonders again how in the world Ed Sullivan ever had his own TV show due to Ed’s own apparent lack of showmanship
  • Ed introduces a group called The Association who performs their hit song “Along Comes Mary” which transports the viewer to a spot unremembered until now
  • The viewer comes to a revelation that the song is most probably about marijuana, something that never had occurred to him during the hundreds of times he previously heard the song
  • The viewer has a hard time grappling with how he could NOT have perceived this before; after all, he had understood the implications surrounding Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit”
  •  Later in the program, the viewer decides that The Turtles’ “Lucky Man” is a song much more worthy of his affection as it is a more relevant reflection of his current life situation than when his youthful ears first heard it.
Now, how in the world could you photograph that?