I love this photograph. It is from my friend's family album. Old photographs are transforming. We are never as good as the people in old photographs, it seems, not nearly as funny or serious. In comparison, we lack depth like pieces of sheet tin.
Here is a picture of my father's family, his brother and sister-in-law, his nephew and his nephew's future wife. Why do I never take off my shirt and lift girls onto my shoulders? I just don't know how to have fun, I guess. Or maybe it is just a lack of living, too many hours with television, then computers. The cold xenon light. Shallow, like sheets of cut tin.
Wonderful...there does seem to be more depth to their lives...but maybe it's the distance...with time we will appear to be less shallow...one can hope!
ReplyDeleteI saw Brewster McCloud a lonnnnnng time ago. I can understand the connection you made. Have you ever seen Short Cuts by Robert Altman?
They were simpler non-introspective times.
ReplyDeleteMy mother once told me about how the Brando movie "The Wild One" captured the imagination of the youth in her small town back in the 50s. She went on to say my father (a wife beating biker and small time criminal who died in a motorcycle crash when I was three) was influenced by the movie and modelled his life on it.
I never knew my father (I've never seen as picture of him) so I watched the movie (I was in my mid 30s by then) to get some idea of what he was like and the ideas that he was motivated by.
I came to the conclusion that he was just some small town simple minded arsehole.
I have no nostalgia about days past.