Today I got a message from a girl I went to high school with requesting a photograph of a mural painted on the front of the gymnasium. It has been recently painted over and she's trying to drum up support to have it repainted. Here was my response:
Dear Friend,
I've been good. Busy, but good. How have you been?
I don't have a picture on-hand. I'm sure that were I to go back to Florida and dig through some boxes in storage, I might be able to come up with a photo... however a trip down South isn't in the foreseeable future.
It would be best to contact someone like Teacher-Lady. She's got photos from every year stacked up in piles. As the former Newspaper adviser, she's bound to have at least one clear shot.
My personal opinion is to leave it the way it is. I think that we try too often to hold on to parts of us that are in the past. Each of us has a season. Each of us were once young, younger, and still younger yet. Every generation is bound to make their own connections and create their own Time. Let them have their Time. They do not need to be in the shadow of a giant Indian, faded by age and decay. Leave the past in the past and move forward, lifted up by your memories but without trying desperately to cling to something ephemeral that cannot really be captured by paint or by anything else.
And as I recall, it wasn't a popular "piece of art" when it was freshly painted in the first place. Nostalgia for times past has a way of distorting our feelings towards things, making us more sentimental for things that we don't always like... then or now. So, I say... leave it painted over. I've got my memories and they're better than any recreation of a bad painting can ever be.
Simplicity Always,
Andrew
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Leave the past in the past... yes. I'm just now reaching this part of my life where I'm able to let go. Sometimes people are the hardest to let go and not so much the "stuff" we've accumulated. You, for instance, I cannot let you go just yet, dear friend...
I think that with people it's a different story. People change and grow. Monuments that mark the past, faded paintings that decay and rot, are only as powerful as the memory behind it. In this case, we are no longer students there. Our time has come and gone. And the painting is now gone as well. Sometimes we have to give in to not trying to be stuck in the past.
It's interesting, because I am a maker of objects of paintings and things that have meanings that are forgotten and misunderstood... that disappear and sometimes will be erased by time. But I have a different opinion about such matters.
And Alba... I'm not going to let you go just yet either!
Post a Comment