Trapped In The Margins

The sudden realization that the things in my life are connected may seem asinine to most but it’s the truth. There have been certain constants in my life that have followed me from my childhood into adulthood. The only thing that has really changed is the medium in which I do things. These constants include writing, reading, photography, television, and music.

My love of the written word began in the womb. My father would read Charles Dickens to my mother in the hopes that I would be able to recite A Tale of Two Cities verbatim by the time I sprung out of my mother’s uterus. This trick must have worked because I was fairly advanced for a child my age. However, I did not begin to write my own poetry and stories until I was six. One avid memory I have is sitting in the back seat of my father’s old car with a Barbie notebook and writing about the leaves changing color. The northeast US is beautiful during Autumn and my six year old self was so enamored by nature’s beauty that I attempted to articulate it with a six year’s old vocabulary.

My relationship with writing took a turn for the worst when I became frustrated about not writing the “great American novel” by the time I was twelve. Frustration turned to angst as I traded in my Barbie notebook for a locked journal. My intense feelings about nature turned to crushes on various boys. My quest for universal truth turned to a quest about if said boy of the school year liked me. Prepubescence struck like lightning and soon my writing dreams went out of the window.

Similarly, my relationship with reading also took a turn during this dark period. My love of difficult works turned to trivial works like Captain Underpants. I no longer challenged myself with reading and fell into a trap. I no longer read for myself but for what was deemed popular at the time. This is a sad fact that I have tried to correct by having a reading list every year since 2012. Reading also took a backseat as my academic progressed. Reading for school went from being a joyous albeit required to being depressing and expensive. I firmly believe that school killed my love of reading but maybe I shouldn’t be so harsh on the American academic system. That’s an argument for another day.

One thing that can be argued about is the rise of photography through advancing technology. Anyone can be a photographer now, despite not studying the art. People tend to forget that photography is art. It’s complexity makes the gears in our head turn faster. It makes our hearts skip a beat. Our breath gets caught when we see a photograph that moves us.

Photography and I go back to when film was still widely used. Disposable cameras were all the rage. Andre 3000 didn’t write a song about destroying a polaroid picture yet. Photography was selective because you only had a certain number of shots before you ran out of film. It was beautiful and frustrating to amateurs like me. I received my first film camera at 8. It was a Fujifilm Smart Shot Deluxe camera.

I never felt confident in my photo taking capabilities because I didn’t have a steady hand. I would constantly shake and I could never line up angles properly. Film was frustrating but it taught me the art of framing a shot. Waiting and watching for that perfect moment when the stars align, the sky is clear, no tourists are in the way, and the shot is yours. Social media has furthered my love of photography and I love that it is more accessible now. I no longer have to worry about using up all of my film, only to hate the shots when they were developed. However, I still hold onto the lessons that I learned from my early days.

Lessons from the past are important to learn from in order to have a better future. Television taught me that. It played a large part in my formative years yet I wasn’t allowed to watch much, besides PBS. Sesame Street helped me get over my speech impediment and gave me the gift of emulating speech. Arthur was definitely my favorite show growing up. There are silly things that I remember from episodes that I haven’t seen in over ten years. Things like that stay with you forever. I may not watch as much t.v. as I used to but YouTube has definitely affected me in the same way. Philip DeFranco is one of my favorite YouTubers because he’s kept it real from the jump. I remember watching my first sxephil video and I  remember his old intro. Things will continue to change and evolve. But that’s the beauty of human ingenuity. There will always be creative people that push the envelope, tear down walls, shatter glass ceilings, and pick up the pieces from the collapse.

Music is my favorite artistic outlet because it combines my love of words and rhythm. I am not a dancer at all but sometimes music gets stuck in my bones. I start moving as though I’m trying to let it out. Certain songs take me back. I can’t help but dance or sing out of tune when I hear certain songs. Memory lane is a nice place but I tend not to dwell there for too long. It’s easy to get caught up in the demons of one’s past. It’s best to let sleeping dogs lie.

I’ll close this with a thought from my previous post. Moments too quickly become memories.

tl;dr Don’t stay in memory lane for too long or else you’ll dig up the ghosts of electronics past.