supercut.

what magnifies these infinitesimal moments in my memory was the fact that I was really there, living through & bearing witness to it

The Persistence of Memory by Salvador Dalí

I’m constantly documenting. Journal pages embellished with cutouts of tickets and receipts. Consistent “monthly dump” collages on my Instagram highlight. An overflowing camera roll that I default to scrolling through at any absentminded moment. Let’s take a picture, I say to my friends on an evening irradiated by laughter — but swallow back what’s on the tip of my tongue: Because I’m going to miss this. Time moves forward relentlessly. The wind of oblivion rushes by around me but I stand against it, stubbornly.

When was the first time that you felt bereft at the realization that all of this is passing like sand sifting through your fingers? I could retrace this awareness to somewhere far back. As a child I scribbled saccharine sentiments across diary pages, tethered onto miscellaneous trinkets and daydreamed about the ability to freeze time. It’s somewhat laughable: I had so much to look forward to but the reflection through the rearview mirror somehow allured me more. Even now, I often catch myself missing something before it’s really over — experiencing the moment in the afterglow of nostalgia even as I’m still passing through it.

Because we are hurtling inexorably into the future. This linearity of time feels unforgiving and I can’t help but attempt — however feebly — to grasp onto something that remains still in order to counteract against the ephemerality of it all. To tether onto the vestige of a moment and recall its radiance in the rearview. Ted Chiang: “Our memories are not the impartial accumulation of every second we’ve lived [but rather] the narrative that we assembled out of selected moments.” It’s in this effort of magnifying and preserving the details of my remembrance that I weave meaning out of the experiences I pass through.

The various artifacts of documentation — photographs, scrapbook collages, vlogs — merely materializes this act of curation implicit in memory-keeping. I’ve long outgrown my fantasies about the ability to freeze time, yet still seek solace from the ostensible permanence of a tangible token for an ephemeral moment. But what the act of documentation offers isn’t merely a chance to reminisce. It’s also an invitation to pay closer attention to the moment as it passes — a practice in cultivating one’s own perception to magnify the cinematic details and undertones of wonder across the ordinary motions. Through it I realize again and again: what I craved was not really novelty but rather novel ways to experience what I have always experienced.

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Earlier this year I found myself living in the city, escaping the tedium of suburbia for the first time in a while. The abundance of new sights and possibilities stirred in me a desire to try something I’ve always wanted to: vlogging my daily life consistently. So I developed a habit of having my (phone) camera ready at nearly every occasion for the duration of the stay. The intention to capture served as a metaphor for the desire to remember, to take the scene in through a lens of appreciation before it all shifts before me.

But there is a side effect as well. While the camera lens bestowed me an attentiveness to details that I would have otherwise disregarded, it soon became clear that any act at curating a memory inevitably diverted attention away from experiencing the present in its fullness. I found myself beginning to filter every scene by the standard of whether it is “vloggable”, constantly gauging the angle and composition that would enhance its ambiance. At any given moment I doubled as both the participant and the observer. At times I wondered — had I missed this moment entirely in an effort to preserve it?

Still, I appreciate the creation of these mementos. Half a year later now I rewatch these vlogs and find myself reliving through it all: How brutally cold that January evening had been when we went to that concert downtown, but we raced through the streets in our inadequate attire purely off the warmth of adrenaline — until that invincibility wore off and we shivered in bed for the remainder of the weekend. How I felt so aglow with joy on that unprecedently warm March day, when we skipped to the riverside with nothing but a bag of Mexican food takeout and a banquet of convenience shop chrysanthemum. How the winter gradually melted into spring. And the city, initially a unsentimental stranger, slowly acquired the familiarity of a friend.

But the richness of that emotional resonance could only have been known by me, the first-person participant of these memories. To an observer, the soft colorgrading and gentle background music soaks the otherwise mundane footages in a mellow ambiance. Every detail in editing converges towards a carefully curated aesthetic. But the various shades of joy and loneliness, excitement and devastation across these few months of my life are nonetheless lost in translation. By abstracting the inherently subjective into a more legible form, I lose grasp on its nuances. In this attempt at preservation, the essence of the moment escapes me and what I’m left with is merely a supercut.

Because experiences in their rawness cannot be fully encapsulated by words, image, any form of replication — can it? Artifacts of documentation serve to commemorate what’s irretrievable. But what glows so vividly in my remembrance is the adrenaline of the moment, the motion of thrusting my entire presence into the seconds that are passing. What magnifies these infinitesimal moments in my memory was the fact I was really there, living through it, bearing witness to it.

Time continues forward in an inexorable motion. At the peak of euphoria emerges the realization that everything is irrevocably passing. But I understand: all of this would not be so awe-inspiring if we really could indefinitely linger. A memento doesn’t conjure permanence any more than it reminds us of the reality of transience. But the mere acknowledgement of something as being in the passing suffices as invitation for you to cherish it more.

Ram Dass: “Our journey is about being more deeply involved in life, yet less attached to it”. I’m trying to pay attention, trying to remember. Grasping for these flickers of warmth glowing in my periphery and taking fistfuls for the keeping. Then upon the soft incandescence of yet another sunrise, releasing it all into the wind.

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sincerely,

kun.