March 12, 2011
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Ghosts, Memories and Mirages
None of us is the same person we were twenty years ago. Literally. All the cells that made up our bodies back then have died off and been replaced by new ones. We’re just connected by the encoded electrical impulses that stretch across time and try to convince us that we have a constant sense of self. Forget it, we’re self-replicating clones of ourselves.
Which is kind of cool when you think about it.
So given that our brains are pretty unreliable narrators of identity, how much of our experience is real and how much is illusion? Ghosts or Memories? Or mirages?
This fuzzy lomo picture is a young lady on the campus of McMaster University holding a sign offering free hugs. Perhaps she felt a sense of duty, trying to overcome the existential void that I mentioned.
More lomos of McMaster University:
A couple of weeks ago, my thesis supervisor from grad school invited me down for lunch at Mac. It was a lovely experience and the first time I’d been there since 1990. I decided to bring the camera gear along to make a record of the place to make sure I had record of my naive youth. It was a little terrifying. I expected the place to have changed but I could barely recognize anything. Where was this place? Who was that young kid who used to study and write and dream there?
Did that guy actually have an office in that building? Whoever it was, I’m pretty sure it couldn’t have been me.The blurry and spooky quality of my photographs just convinced me all the more.
