I’ve been combing my image archive recently as I look for installation views to include on my (currently in-redesign) website. I found this pic, probably from 2008, wearing a cream silk shirt, a black jacket and some red nails. I love seeing glimmers of my current style amidst all the bad haircuts and ill-fitting garments from yonder year. This is an ensemble I would whip out now without question.
During this dive, I’ve also wondered whether I’ll ever lose my taste for these fairly regular excursions into my own past. Is this a 20s thing? Maybe it goes hand in hand with my desire to purge purge purge with such regularity. Something about this throwing away and then clinging feels so extreme. When I go all macrocosm on this idea I think, “Well, I tend to feel that way about people and things and places as well”. That is to say, I’m quick to move on and quick to feel nostalgic once the time has passed.
The impetus for all my thinking has simply been curiosity. Why? Why do I care what I looked like? Why do I care who I knew or what I was making? I want to know: Did I hum? And the questions make my head spin with new questions. But, truth is, it feels good to have questions about who I used to be. And if I want to be dramatic about it, this thought comes after many years longing to shove all those “past selves” into a box and throw that box, burning, off a tall cliff. Hah! Take that past!
But the real surprise is that these rendezvous with my own self circa 2007 and 08 and 09 begets something new: Tenderness. Wow! I feel a connection to my past self, finally. And like Joan Didion says, ya better keep on good terms with yr past self lest they wake you up in the middle night uncalled!*
*excuse my misquote, in my head it’s John Wayne’s voice.
