An Archive of a Life
A video letter on why we bother to record anything at all.
I’ve spent a lot of time recently standing very still in the middle of Kyoto, holding a microphone.
It’s an odd way to spend an afternoon. You feel people’s eyes on you as they walk past; a slight bewilderment at someone who has stopped moving entirely, staring at a temple bell or a tree. This week’s video letter is kind of about that specific feeling, and why I think the act of hitting the record button is more important than we might give it credit for.
The idea for this video started when my wife found a box of old video tapes from when she was young. A collection of her parents’ home video tapes; a small archive of lovely translucent plastic and shaky footage of a mundane Thursday.
Watching them back made me think of the idea that those tapes are an archive of a feeling. Of how people laughed before they knew they were being filmed all the time.
We’re so busy now editing our lives into something worth showing online that we can forget to document the ordinary things. And the ordinary things are always the first to go, aren’t they?
In the video, I also talk a bit about the paradox of using a machine to help you pay attention to the world. It’s a bit of a contradiction, but for me, the recorder helps me tune into sounds that I might walk right past otherwise. It’s a way to say: “I was here, I was paying attention, and I thought this was worth keeping.”
That’s what the people who join me on sound walks are doing too, in their own way. Making small audio postcards. Someday they’ll play back the recording and won’t quite remember the name of the shrine — but they’ll be standing in it again, instantly.
I hope something in this week’s video finds you. Thank you for watching.
And if you think a friend might enjoy this, sharing it genuinely helps more than you might think.
Thank you for noticing with me.
SJF
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