1 post tagged “backpacking”
I was listening to a recent Fresh Air interview with Win Butler and Régine Chassagne of the band The Arcade Fire. The host, Terry Gross, asked a question about their audiences -- with their newest album, they've graduated to much larger venues, and they rarely perform from within the audience as they used to often do.
Something Butler said really struck me:
"It got to the point where Richard would be playing the bass and people would be like, taking pictures with their cell phones and grabbing his arms...It's fine. I think it's really interesting to be in a band at this time. You see how much people are mediating their experiences through their cell phones and through their cameras. It's like, 'Yeah! No! I'm at the show right now! They're singing the song right this second...Oh! Oh, they're looking at me, they're looking at me!'"
"It's like, why don't you just have the experience and then have a memory of it, instead of telling your friend that you're, like, maybe having a memory of something? It's like, 'Remember when I told you I was having this experience?' It's pretty wild..."
It's not a new concept or observation, but I love the way he breaks it down. I do love my digital camera, and I do love being that obnoxious person at a bar or party who captures the dancing and escapades of my friends, but I hate that moment after the flash goes off where everyone crowds around to look at the just-taken photo on the display screen.
"Look at how great this is! Look at how much fun we're having!" While memories are being made, instant technology reminds us to pay attention -- to remember in real time -- that memories are being made.
My last big batch of photos before I got my digital camera were from a month-long trip through Europe I took with my college roommates in 2004. During the trip we were psyched and tired and pissed off and annoyed and sleepy and sick and bumped and bruised and happy and homesick, but we had processed the memories -- categorized them, drafted mental storytelling notes, and even written them down with paper and pen -- before there was any photographic evidence.
