Traveling back in time to the tale of the talented trickster, I turn the brittle pages of an ancient photo album, harkening back to the days when we once used physical photo albums. It was a time before photos could be taken on a phone, before they could even be taken digitally. The medium was film, the process was called development, and the whole experience was one that instilled patience and perseverance. It required mistakes and an endless cycle of trial and error, with just enough success to tantalize and keep us working for more.
All of my projects prior to 2004 were created in this old-fashioned way, some even glued and bound within a three-ring binder because that was all my limited resources and technological limits could produce. Yet rather than feel like I missed out on anything, those processes taught me more than the ease of whipping out a phone that gets perfectly-focused shots without a moment’s care could ever teach. It was the same sort of learning that cracking the Dewey Decimal system taught me in the library. We didn’t have information at the click of a mouse. We had to search. And then we had to research. And then we had to search again. It was an adventure, and yes, it took a lot of work. My patience and ability to slowly work through a problem was honed and improved. It wasn’t instantaneous, it wasn’t without effort, and it absolutely made me a better person.
That said, lugging around twenty rolls of film, a heavy, bulky camera, and waiting two weeks for photos to be developed wasn’t the ideal way of getting images. It took me a while, but eventually I came around to the digital camera. And then I gave in to the phones. Today, I find myself taking advantage of the technology, and very appreciative that I didn’t always have it. We tend to value things more when we remember what it was like before they got so easy.
As for these antiquated shots from ‘The Talented Trickster Tour: Reflections of a Floating World’, they remind me a time and space where lessons were learned – lessons that carry through to this day. In some ways, the idea of the floating world is more resonant than ever – an idea that the world is dark and destructive, and we might as well enjoy what beauty and pleasure we can find because everything is temporal and fleeting in nature. In the past, I would sometimes avoid the blooms of the cherry tree because I knew they would not last, and the regret that inevitably came with their demise would be more than the heart could handle. These days I seek out that fleeting beauty, sit with it in appreciation while I can, then move on, grateful for the experience, grateful for the smile it produced, happy with the memory. You cannot buy or keep the transitory beauty of the cherry bloom – you can only hold it in your heart.
