Wednesday, April 03, 2013

Life, Recorded

This morning on the streetcar with the sun streaming brightly, vividly, warmly, I blinked sleepily and soaked it all in. Then peripherally, I noticed the round bulb of the camera on the ceiling of the streetcar. Suddenly the thought came to me: imagine all the moments you're captured on camera. All those moments you didn't realize you were being captured, recorded. And imagine if all the moments you ever were, in the whole lifespan of your life, was all put together and played for our viewing.

All those CCTV records: wandering through malls, in the stairwells of office buildings, the surreptitious first kiss in the school hallway when you thought no one was looking, picking your nose in an elevator, or posing as you would never have posed in front of anyone else. The ice cream sundae you shared with a friend in a food court, or the one you'd dropped on the floor to the dismay of your parents years earlier. The moments of frenzied panic when you got lost in a crowd, or the moments you spent hiding from your siblings playing hide-n-seek.

Imagine all those forgotten memories, or being able to see yourself as others had seen you. Imagine comparing how you were to how you are today, and imagine seeing the world you were in with a different set of eyes. Imagine seeing your life all put together in those furtively recorded moments....