Memories

Baby boomers and many of their parents were sold on the notion of saving their memories. I know my parents collected thousands of slides, print photos, super-8 film reels, records, cassettes, and video tapes. Snapshots of vacations and every event they wanted to “remember.” Camera and film companies encouraged them and us to “capture the moment” or “save a memory.” The result was millions of photos no one will ever look at, and no child will want to keep. Like so much of our consumer society, most attempts to “save a memory” turned out to be superfluous. We simply didn’t need to capture all those moments, at least not on film or tape.

The situation is somewhat better now. Some boomers and most millennials have taken up digital photography, so all they need to do is hit the delete key and save only the best or most meaningful memories. Yet, I’d bet most people still save thousands of snapshots no one will ever look at and no child will want to keep, even if storage isn’t a problem.

The problem is that we hoard mementos rather than memories. If we were making memories, we would be more selective in creating and collecting keepsakes. Taking a picture with one’s mind is becoming a lost art. Try drawing a picture from memory and you’ll see the point. The challenge is creating the opportunity to do something meaningful, not recording it for an imagined posterity.

Children naturally want to take home a thing when they visit a theme park, museum, zoo, or just a store. Trinkets to remind them of “that time.” It doesn’t help that modern advertising and marketing practically beg us to be like children, to buy more things that nobody else will want a week or a month later, much less after we’re dead and lying in the ground. And even that – burial – is an attempt to keep something around that we know nobody would want to have in their house. Cemeteries are literally the ultimate attempt to store a keepsake for all time.

We collect too many things and many of us can’t let them go. It’s painful to realize that possibly 20 out of 20,000 pictures are really meaningful. It’s hard coming to grips with the fact that practically nobody wants your parent’s furniture or your mother’s plate collection or “vintage” clothing. Our children and grandchildren don’t have the space and we were encouraged to collect too damn much stuff.

In November 1997, National Geographic published a set of photos by Jim Brandenburg. He deliberately set out to capture just one image per day for 90 days, and Nat Geo published many of them. Selectivity is at the core of all great art. The series of photos Mr. Brandenburg shot are a testament to selectivity – having the discipline to see a meaningful image and the preparation to capture it on the first try.

A lifetime ago, I went to a Stan Kenton summer jazz camp. I had the opportunity to be in an arranging class with Hank Levy, a master arranger who was adept at writing in odd time signatures. I was interested in following in his footsteps, so I wrote an arrangement in 7/4 to be played, along with several others, by the Kenton Band. I still remember the gist of Mr. Levy’s comments. I had many good ideas, enough for several arrangements, but I tried to force them all into one arrangement. He said I needed to be much more selective and focus on one or two ideas to make the arrangement more coherent (playable) and less chaotic. Mr. Levy was very kind. My arrangement was a train wreck, but at least I got a clue about how to fix it.

If we try to hold on to too much stuff, we risk having nothing but chaos – a hoard of incoherent memories piled on top of one another. But if we are selective, we might end up collecting a few treasures for ourselves and our children’s children.