Never satisfied with anything, I decided to spice things up at the beginning of this year by signing up for an Instagram account and throwing photos into the virtual ether, much like many others before me. But what’s life without a bit of fun? And what’s fun without setting some strict rules to adhere to?
What initially started as a no-context, one-a-day photo stream of things I happen to see and snapshot on a daily basis lasted about five days before the “no-context” bit was mercilessly dragged away. Apparently you can only go as far as day five before someone queries your actions and motives and you have to come clean that your action is a one-a-day photo stream and your motive is ‘pfft…*wildly-flailing-shrug*…just because..?’
There are, admittedly, a couple of factors that may have led to this vaguely dull and somewhat confusing living photo album. Having compiled them in my mind, it occurs to me that, even more admittedly, they all revolve around death and mortality. So come, gather round y’all, and let me babble on at you about how we’re all not getting out of this alive…
OK, reason one: some time ago, I happened across some news story or blog post or shared thing on the social medias that informed me of the story of a person. Wait, stay with me, there’s more. This person was a guy living in New York and the story was about a project he’d done using a Polaroid camera in the 90s, or some other time in the recent past. OK, I don’t remember a lot of the finer details, not even the guy’s name. Forgive me.
Anyway, this story was about a blog where each Polaroid photo was dated, all one day apart in chronological order. Photos depicted landmarks, food and drink, smiley people one would assume to be friends – you know, the everyday slices of life you forget about as soon as they’ve happened. The photos continued up until a certain date (again, details, I’m no good) when there simply were no more after that. Why stop the project?
Looking back through the final few months’ worth of photos, we (the audience) see hospital beds, medical equipment, sad looking people one would assume to be friends – you know, the signifiers of a debilitating illness. Effectively, this entire photo album show the life of one person as it happens, through good times and bad. To me there’s something worthwhile of an over-arching document of all of life’s events, particularly since none of us know what’s going to happen when, so I started something similar in the hope I’ll do it to the day I, too, succumb to death… or boredom, whichever’s more feasible.
Reason the second: I played the interactive tele-visual computerised game Life Is Strange over the New Year and found the idea of someone going around taking snapshots with a camera to be quite Romantic (with a capital R, to signify the difference between “arbitrary actions to give life meaning” from “what the kids call ‘love'”), if a little hipster-y.
I’ve never wanted to be a photography student, get caught in a tornado or make significant life-or-death decisions. Having been put through such experiences, however, if I was make a choice, I think I’d go for the photography, thanks.
While not directly influencing my motives for conducting a photo stream, aspects of this game must have fed into it in some way or another. Taking photos is a nice way to document things and remember things (unless you’re drugged up and tied to a chair), and the story’s overall theme of death being inevitable are just components of what’s become a still-young photo album.
Reason number Roman numeral triple-i: Ever since I realised that Spotify houses virtually every bit of recorded music that’s ever existed, I’ve tagged many of the songs I either enjoy listening to now or have enjoyed listening to in the past (including those I remember from my childhood) into one giant playlist. As of this day, that playlist contains over 1,200 songs and would take approximately forever to listen to start-to-finish.
It’s always a risk opening that playlist and hitting ‘Shuffle’, but it means I’ll enjoy – or at least remember – whatever happens to appear. Some time after starting that, I came across various stories of elderly people suffering with dementia suddenly bursting with energy and singing along to old songs as they’re played back to them. Something about music’s affect on the brain means that, evidently, not even a memory-wiping disease can override a good tune.
Without wanting to get too ahead of myself, it occurs to me that in 50 or 60 or 70 or more years time, I have just about as much chance as anyone else of being affected by something like that. In effect, that supermassive playlist has become an insurance policy. Like many people, I’m not planning on having dementia, but should it happen I’m stating right here that I want that playlist on shuffle every single day to keep me boogie-ing like I’m 27 again.
That last one has nothing to do with the photos but I’d like to attach the same sentiment to it. I don’t have to do this living photo album. I don’t have to save every song I’ve ever liked. I don’t have to have a pension. I don’t have to put money into a savings account with the intention of buying a house one day. I don’t have to do any of it.
But I’m a long-term thinker and one day I might want to look back on all these weird, wonderful, stupid, mundane, amazing photos and – just maybe – I’ll be glad I did in the first place.
Despite the fact that a peanut butter chocolate cake with Kool-Aid sounds like a sugar-based heart attack waiting to happen, this little slice of RnB hip-hop (or whatever the right genre may be) is pretty smooth. Actually, I suppose the cake could also be considered smooth as long as the peanut butter isn’t chunky. But whatever.
Whilst not something I’d find myself listening to normally, this has wriggled its way into my brain space and occupied my ears in a satisfactory fashion. In some respect, maybe I could say that my musical horizons are broadening, as I become acquainted with a variety of styles. In another, though, you could say I’m only really following this because I liked Donald Glover in Community. Up to you, really.
Childish Gambino – Redbone
Jamie Walsh 
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