Old photos
Having read the Resident Loon's post below about finding the old house and the man's belongings it reminded me of something I did when I was an art undergraduate....

I was really obsessed with philosophy and existential angst (it's been said many, many times before that I can't do anything by halves - I can't have a vague interest in Plato...oh no! Bloody French existentialists instead....).

One thing in particular that bothered me (and still does in some respects, although now I'd say more that I'm interested and intrigued by this) is the idea that once you're dead and everyone who knows you has died, you have truly died (I can't remember which philosopher said this - I'm paraphrasing, but I think it was dear old Jean-Paul). Added to which everyone remembers events differently.....

So...that means if you find old photos of someone unknown to you then you can make up whole stories about their life.

This is pretty much what the tabloids do
anyway....

Well I found some old photos in a junk shop in sunny Margate. They showed a small boy aged around two or three, named him, mentioned the year and the place. He was born the same year as my dad - 1940, so conceivably he was still alive.

I fired up Google and rather quickly I found him! And even better - an email address.

A couple of emails later and I sent the photos in their original album off to this man and reunited him with a bit of his past.

Other photos I had picked up in the same junk shop were untraceable so I made a series of films using them...this led onto me taking footage in an empty house where an old man had recently died. The empty house film can be seen here.

I don't think this has anything whatsoever to do with Karma (I can't say I particularly believe in the idea anyway) but I like the idea of everyone being remembered somehow...even if it's not the truth.
( chickenlady b3ta's very own Elizabeth Taylor, Tue 26 Feb 2008, 15:23, 17 replies)

On a similar theme
Someone also said that experience only becomes history once the events have passed beyond the memory of the living - which is when they cease to be true and become only interpretation. Maybe it was Orwell.
(frankspencer, Tue 26 Feb 2008, 15:33, closed)

Your making my head hurt now.
But how can that be if you live in memory through your children and their children.

*Hmm - strokes chin*
( girlinthehole, Tue 26 Feb 2008, 15:40, closed)

In a similar vein
I'm always sad at the number of graves in my local village church graveyard that never get any visitors or flowers because everyone who knew the departed have passed on themselves. However, every spring (i.e. now) one grave (about 100 years old) is covered in snowdrops. I like to think that someone a long time ago wanted to ensure that at least once a year there would be flowers on the grave so planted all those snowdrop bulbs.
( Colonel Dracula Two manky hookers and a racist dwarf, Tue 26 Feb 2008, 16:08, closed)

Hmmm...
Doesn't ring any Sartrean bells with me, I'm afraid... the distinction he draws between être en-soi, être pour-soi and être pour autrui are different. Death, meanwhile, was more Heidegger's thing - although, again, what he did with it was very different.

Maybe it was Camus? He spouted all kinds of crap.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Tue 26 Feb 2008, 16:10, closed)

@BGB
Precisely! If your children and grandchildren remember you then you live on until they are gone too. Only once they're dead do you die too.
( chickenlady b3ta's very own Elizabeth Taylor, Tue 26 Feb 2008, 16:12, closed)

@ Enzyme
I'm pretty sure it wasn't Camus. I wish I could remember who it was though...it's going to annoy me now.
( chickenlady b3ta's very own Elizabeth Taylor, Tue 26 Feb 2008, 16:13, closed)

I vaguely
remember a story where the dead all lived in a hotel and the more famous ones had the best rooms, and the ones who faded from memory moved further away. I could, of course, be conflating some existentialist French A-level text with Hilbert's infinite hotel.
( crackhouseceilidhband Fuck off back to Mumsnet, Tue 26 Feb 2008, 16:14, closed)

short film
nice to see somebody still using Super 8 in this digital era ;)
(highly_defined, Tue 26 Feb 2008, 16:17, closed)

@ CHCB
If the hotel thing existed then I could guarantee the room with the dodgy plumbing and sheets which smelled of boiled onions.


Actually I think that hotel is in Luxembourg.
( chickenlady b3ta's very own Elizabeth Taylor, Tue 26 Feb 2008, 16:18, closed)

oh lordy
an infinite hotel with infinitely bad plumbing and infinite onions... I'd be catching the infinite bus back out of there.
( crackhouseceilidhband Fuck off back to Mumsnet, Tue 26 Feb 2008, 16:19, closed)

at long last.....
I appear to have stumbled upon a typical after dinner conversation...I'll get my smoking jacket and copy of brideshead revisited. Decant the port/sherry/brandy for we shall convene in the parlour room where my servant has the fire roaring. Snuff anyone?

Seriously, I regret wasting my time at uni doing marketing and business. Classics and philosophy sounds much more interesting. Phillip Kotler bores the shit out of most people, myself included, and it doesn't make for good conversation
(CaptainFellatioNelson is trying to kill me, Tue 26 Feb 2008, 17:13, closed)

Chickenlady
How kind of you! I bet he loved getting pieces of his past back. So many pictures of my childhood I remember and don't know where they've gone to...
(TDub Nunc id vides, nunc ne vides on, Tue 26 Feb 2008, 18:34, closed)

???
Chickenlady is a native of Margate?
Someone to share my pain?
It burns, I tell you, BURNS!
(I R Tomsk pyromaniacs will only inflame the situation, Tue 26 Feb 2008, 21:13, closed)

I need to go look for it...
Somewhere I have a photo I got in a junk shop that shows a tall, balding man of early maturity with very pale grey eyes- you can tell that even though the photo is B&W. He's wearing a light colored suit and has a rather cold expression.

The cardboard jacket it's in has a swastika embossed on it.

I have my very own Nazi portrait. I need to find it before it invades something...
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Tue 26 Feb 2008, 21:46, closed)

No
I'm not a native of Planet Thanet, but I did go to school there (if you read any of my posts regarding school you'll know exactly where...) and my grandmother's family lived there and still do.
( chickenlady b3ta's very own Elizabeth Taylor, Tue 26 Feb 2008, 22:14, closed)

small enough world
Ah that's sweet, he's probably not that forgotten, seeing as my mum seems to know everybody in Thanet.

My ex-girlfriend goes to your old school.

Tis a small world, I'd imagine more people from the area would be tickled funny enough in the head to be on here.
(RizzJizz doesn't do life., Wed 27 Feb 2008, 2:23, closed)

That's so Amélie.
*click*
( Maladicta, Wed 27 Feb 2008, 13:17, closed)