Just found this video that my Google plus account produced — an automated construction using images that I posted to my old Blogger account that were sitting in a Picasa album. Facebook builds similar things at the end of the year. Watching I was struck by how well it depicted, in part, some of the things that took place in my life. Paging through old family photo albums that my mother fastidiously curated and maintained do the same sort of thing. But who has time to carefully mount and label images with meaningful captions anymore?
Certainly not me.
It did get me thinking about Scooter in the Sticks and the reasons why I blog.
- To get rich. (Hah, fat chance, pipe dream, immersion in denial)
- To sort things out that perplex or bother me. (This is absolutely true)
- To practice writing. (That’s how it started. A blank page doesn’t frighten me anymore)
After looking at the video a couple times I realized there’s another reason — I want to share something of myself, leave something behind to help my family, and my infant granddaughter know something about what goes on between my ears.
I never really knew my father despite having spent a lot of time with him. We were close, he was supportive, but I never really knew what he thought about, what bothered him, concerned him. In art school I produced a series of videos about myself and I remember screening one for a class and afterwards several students — decades younger than me — told me how much they wished their fathers had made something like this. Like me, they didn’t really know their fathers.
The Year in Pictures doesn’t reveal any secrets about me. But it does reflect some of the things I’ve done. As I approach 900 posts on this blog I can’t help but believe there’s some insight about what’s important to me. I don’t have anything about my father that would fill one blog post that’s not a photograph. After he was gone there were so many questions that I wished I had asked.
So many.
And the same goes for my mother though she revealed a bit more. But much was unsaid and unlooked for. Too bad now.
Do you know your father and mother?