"Could you wanna take my picture, 'cause I won't remember."
--Filter, "Take a Picture"
Recently, I noticed something strange about my Apple Music....it is FILLED with songs that have the word "picture" or "pictures" or "photograph" in the title. To wit....
The Cure: Pictures of You (3 versions...hey, I like the song)
Mussorsky: Pictures at an Exhibition
Flock of Seagulls: Wishing (If I Had a Photograph of You)
Nickeback: Photograph (don't judge)
Def Leppard: Photograph
Filter: Take a Picture
Miranda Lambert: Picture to Burn (we did it in Ensemble years ago--cut me some slack)
And then are songs that are about pictures, chief among them "In Color," by an old friend of mine named Jamey Johnson.
We're obsessed with pictures...photographs...portraits.... Whatever you call them, we love them. I mean, Instagram exists because we love to share our world through pictures.
But something about pictures struck me this summer while I was on the road with Southwind.
We were in Buffalo/Niagara Falls for a few days, and on the last day, we had some free time at Niagara Falls. As you can imagine, everyone was snapping selfies at the falls. It's a pretty amazing place. I had never been there, so I took some pics there myself. As the staff and members all kinda stood around admiring the view, I thought about how I was about to catch an Uber to a hotel and my involvement with Southwind would end for 2019. And then, I thought "well, the pictures will be a good reminder of a great week on the road." And it was that word....reminder.....that stuck in my head for days on end.
The truth is that a picture is just a reminder....and it is ONLY a reminder. Nothing more. We take photos in an attempt to stamp our place in time so we can say "I was there." But the picture isn't "there." It's a just a reminder of "there." Now, don't hear what I'm not saying!! Take the dang picture!! Take as many as you want!! But the key, I think, is this: don't let the camera get in the way of what is really going on, which is THE MOMENT. Be IN the moment. Pause for a second and look around you. Take it all in!!! And be PRESENT in the present reality.
You see, we can look at people's pics and we can tell "what" they were doing. We might can tell "where" they were doing. And just maybe, we can tell "how" they were doing. But that's still our own inference, and our inference may be way off!! The picture is only a "snapshot" of the reality that was. And to me, the reality that was is what is truly BEAUTIFUL!!! My memory of an event that was captured by a picture is FAR, FAR, FAR better than the picture. A picture is two-dimensional. My memory is infinitely-dimensional. Pictures can't capture the smell of perfume....or the sound of a waterfall....or the freezing cold you felt on that skiing trip....or the blistering heat you felt on the 11teenth time you repped that part of the show.
Jamey Johnson's words say it so perfectly: "if it looks we were scared to death.....you should have seen it in color."
The pictures of my kids that sit on my cabinet at work are all great pictures and I wouldn't take anything for them....but they pale in comparison to my kids themselves. REAL life was found in the moment the picture captured: not in the picture itself. If it looks like Ashlyn was beautiful in that red dress at Miss Middlusia...you should have seen her in person. If it looks like I was happy as could be to be sharing that moment at church with Grant...you should have seen it in person. If it looks like Jack and I were tired and worn out standing on that bridge...you should have been there to smell us! LOL!!!
I'm sure one day, I won't be able to remember anything at all--God forbid. But for now, my memory works, and the memories I have of all the moments these photographs captured are absolutely priceless. The truth/meaning/significance that we infer from events in our lives is up to us to determine, and whatever that is, is our reality. If you ask the people in a picture how they remember the moment, they'll probably all have differing stories...but they'll all be right!! That's kinda cool if you ask me.
Have a great day.
