I recorded a video as if I wanted to capture the moment. I couldn’t stop myself, even though I tried. But what does it mean to “capture”? As if a visual memory could bring me back later - comfortably seated on my couch - to this exact instant at the nearby seashore.
While standing there, I suddenly felt as if I were in the Arctic again. Yet despite the vast abundance of water, nothing in my sight resembled the austere northern landscape. Then I realised it was the sound: the rocking sea, water lapping against the pier, a regular impact echoing in the cold. It was stronger than usual after the storms of the previous days. Its rhythm recalled the rocking of a boat sailing through Arctic waters. And then there was the feeling of fresh, cool, dry air on my face.
Turning my eyes away and walking back, I thought about this need to stop time, carried in my pocket as a video. My phone holds the moments I want to remember. But if I were to throw it away, who would carry these memories?
When I return from the seaside, I notice my senses have sharpened. I see and hear more acutely, as if the colours of leaves or the rustle of grass have become more vivid - like Andy Goldsworthy’s art, fleeting yet intensely alive.
Where does this desire come from - to return again and again? Is it the simple, eternal urge to stop time, perversely realised in a phone? Yet it feels like time also gives everything meaning. I think of Juhani Pallasmaa and his insistence that buildings, too, need to carry traces of the passage of time.
Now, as I write, my hands are still cold. They haven’t returned from the ocean. Looking at the image, I do not instantly return to that place or feeling. The sound brings it back. The touch of cold air does. I wonder: if we collected sounds instead of images, would our hearing become oblivious, just as our eyesight is overwhelmed by images? How do I see again - anew?
I often find myself thinking when I talk about something and someone asks if I have an image of it, is this really needed? What if I try to describe it, and you imagine it in your own way? Even - or especially - when I struggle to find the words. If I describe what I remember, and how I remember it, isn’t there a quality in that? A quality in the words I choose, or in their absence; in the feelings or details I recall; in my own filter of what was worth remembering.
I wonder if, in this way, I share more than just an image. When I called my partner after spending two weeks in the Arctic without reception, I couldn’t speak. He told me afterwards that it said everything to him.
I have always criticised myself for not remembering movie titles, names, or complete stories. But I remember very clearly the feelings they evoked in me. You can tell quite a lot about a movie, a play, or anything else by the way it was experienced.
I went to the shore again. It was peaceful. I didn’t take a picture, despite being very tempted. When I turned my eyes away from the view and started walking back, I realised that I still saw it in my head - the light pink colour gracefully dancing on the ocean surface, the various shapes of its wrinkles: deeper, smoother, shorter, longer. All these lines drew an image I carried back home.
Now I feel grateful that I didn’t take that picture. I have this experience stored in my memory. Why does my phone have to carry all my memories, shaped to squares, stripped of meaning? I think about all the images saved on it, taken as a way of stopping time, holding a moment, and feeling safe, because I have a place to store them.
A phone is a leaky vessel for memories. It strips experience down to flat visuals. I feel richer now for not taking this one unnecessary image. One image less. One experience more. I am my own vessel for memories - and I am leaky too. I am beginning to think there is a quality in this leakage.