Erasure of Digital Rain

Nobody will contest that recent technology has impacted much of how we live and work. The way we preserve our memories and traditions has also changed dramatically and to me there's a depth of sadness to it all. 

Most of us remember growing up looking at photo albums with pictures falling off pages, yellowed and bent. The pages themselves were often discolored and torn from being handled by so many hands. I remember sitting on the couch with my Mom and Dad, the gigantic green photo album trying desperately to hold the hundreds of memories documented on Kodak paper-the kind with the texture that made the record-scratching sound if you ran your fingernails over it (which is probably why so many pictures turned yellow!) It was an experience to not only thumb through the memories, but to sit and listen to the stories behind each capture. 

And I can still sense the anticipation of taking undeveloped film to get processed. After German camp and prom and baseball games and our spring break trip to Chicago-they couldn't develop fast enough! And the wait made the memory sweeter because I put so much time and effort into preserving it. 

Holding a photo in your hand, cradling the edges, delicately sliding it into a plastic sheet-this all requires the work that is part of the memory process. To care for and nurture these memories  further embeds them into our story as does taking them back out, flipping through the pages and re-telling the narrative behind the shot to others. Taking out my laptop and showing someone my iPhoto collection just isn't the same as sitting down and telling the intimate stories of paper pictures.

The other day I took a picture of a pencil tree to go on Craigslist. I didn't need the picture after I uploaded it to my computer so I deleted it. When you choose to delete on our particular camera, digital rain starts from the top of the view screen and covers over the photo until it is gone. Just like that. With the click of a button. Erased. 

The way we preserve memories has changed and I wonder how much we're missing by deleting them so fast. I have a hard enough time remembering last week and now need to be more deliberate about getting photos printed and sticking them in albums. I suppose it's about trying harder to live life in the slow lane, about trying to keep the visuals connected to experiences and being faithful to share our stories together in community. It's more about holding onto what is both good and significant about the past--like thumbing through a yellowed, battle-tested photo album.