Holding back time

Recently I rediscovered a Rush song that I hardly remembered, if at all: “Time Stand Still”. It’s a great song by itself, but the lyrics struck me hard. A few days ago was my 39th birthday and I feel time is passing too quickly.

“Freeze this moment a little bit longer / Make each sensation a little bit stronger

(…) The innocence slips away

(…) Summer’s going fast / Nights growing colder

Children growing up / Old friends growing older”

Thinking about this made me realize that I’ve been slowing down on my last film rolls. One was already exposed for a few months and another was in a camera, waiting for me to press the shutter release no more than two or three more times.

Most of the pictures were from a family trip. It wasn’t a particularly fun trip. Times were tense in my country thanks to the coming Election Day. A particularly bad politician ended up being elected thanks to a very revolted people, my parents included. Let’s just say that any conversation was tense back then.

Fast forward to a couple weeks ago. I finally developed both films, and, by then, The animosity has sort of died out and it felt good to see the resulting pictures. The happy moments were registered and the tense conversations were not.

I ended up thinking about that. We can’t really freeze time, but what are photos if not a slice of time, forever frozen? Whenever I remember the lyrics of that Rush song, I’ll remember those rolls.

I’ll probably try to hold back sensations a little bit longer doing that a few other times.

Songs about photography

I wanted to write something about music since I’ve started this. Music that specifically mentions photography, to be precise.

After thinking for a few months without any kind of research, I came to the conclusion that few songs were written about the subject in general, at least in my favorite genres, and I ended up with a short list. Hey, it was an almost-year-old draft and I had to publish it one day.

• Photograph, by Def Leppard;
• Cyclops, by Bruce Dickinson;
• The Camera Eye, by Rush;
• Electric Eye, by Judas Priest;
• Pictures Of Home, by Deep Purple.

Short list, yes, but I’m mainly a Hard Rock and Metal guy, so I have no idea (nor the inclination to find out) if Lady Gaga or whomever the kids listen to these days wrote a song about selfies or the such.

In the end, I wondered for a few minutes if photography is still seen by people these days as something romantic enough to have a song written about, but then I remembered that most of the music these days is unlistenable, so no, I’d rather not know.

Actually, almost all cameras these days are as disposable and uninteresting as today’s pop songs, so there’s that.