It Just Looks Like One.

I have a little box, and inside that box is something like cellophane and powdered metal.

When I’m walking around and I tell that machine to blink, it blinks.

And in that blinking moment a small amount of the light that surrounds me, that confounds me, that astounds me, that assaults me gets into that box and makes a painful splash on the cellophane, one that will later look vaguely familiar, with shapes and forms that I believe have some importance. Triangles and squares, some arcs and the shape of mama, or a dog or a tree, a roof over my head. Shapes with millions of years of history stamped onto molecules like music on vinyl. Don’t call it a memory, it just looks like one.

Now, you can get a computer to generate those shapes if you want to. Just ask your phone to do it; it knows where you’ve been. Like the Google AI systems that generate fake celebrity photos. All the glamour, none of the soul. That’s because a computer doesn’t have time for pain the way a box with cellophane does, or we do.

My photos are on Smugmug and Flickr
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