Internal Dialogue

While combing through countless videos I made during the late nineties I was constantly confronted with who I was. It’s weird seeing yourself like that; it’s like a chapter from the past you’d never expect to read again. The thing about home movies is that they’re so extremely specific. It’s a short but powerful memory from the past: an almost exact replication of what you saw and heard at the time you made that film. We retain the memory of certain experiences that had a profound impact on us, yet these are nowhere near enough to give us an accurate picture of ourselves in the past. Because in time, we forget every detail. It’s often said that there are specific moments that shape our lives, but I don’t think this is true for most people. At least not for me. Our lives are defined by all the tiny and so often insignificant things we do. Who we are isn’t defined by five or six experiences that had a major impact on our lives, but rather by the thousands of tiny experiences and thoughts we had.

And these videos show us some of these tiny and mostly insignificant experiences. But it’s in these that we can find who we truly were; because these are the things we forgot. The things we remember might have happened just a little different in reality than they do in our minds, but that doesn’t make them any less real or valuable. But the little things, the things I see in these videos, is who I was.

It’s not that I don’t like to be confronted with myself – I actually like looking through old photo albums and things I wrote in the past – but there are certain things I either forgot or remember very differently. Although the specifics of all these tiny things are now unknown to us, we still carry the bigger picture in our minds. But even just one tiny thing can reshape an entire picture. It’s not always pleasant to see myself and have that image disturbed.

Although in reality it’s nearly not as dramatic as I make it our to be, in essence it remains true. Because I relived certain experiences from ten or eight years ago, the broader picture I have in my mind is now slightly altered. I haven’t yet decided if this is better than remembering something that might not be totally accurate. My memories are precious – I’ve often reminisced and written about the past – so why would I want to risk damaging that which I hold dear? In all honestly it probably doesn’t matter that I’ve reestablished certain memories, because in time I will forget the tiny details again and only remember the bigger picture. Maybe a slightly altered bigger picture, but one without details nonetheless. Besides, the majority of the things I saw in these videos is positive: they just reaffirmed the memories that had been hiding in the depths of my head.

I have no doubt that in ten years I’ll look back at some of the photos I make right now and think: wow, how could I have forgotten?