So, last night after a backyard barbeque in Brooklyn, where I came away with the revelation that hot dogs and cucumber make for a brilliant combination, some friends and I hopped the train to Manhattan and walked a long way up the West Side to find a side street the police had kept open for folks who wanted to see the fireworks. We ended up stuck behind a massive brick building with "Free Cold Storage" stencilled on the side, and a view of the north end of the show, the main event making for a bright outline of the warehouse. Which, you know, what ultimately fine: a corner of New York City fireworks is bigger than the main show in my hometown or anywhere on Cape Cod, where I've spent most of my July 4ths in the past.
What got to me though was the number of people with cell phones and cameras, even some on tripods, taking pictures of that corner of fireworks at the expense of watching them. Unless you're a good photographer, or have a camera with some strong night settings, your pictures of a light show are going to turn out unwatchably blurry, if at all. When you take pictures of something that's only partially visible by holding your hands up in a crowd, you block other people from seeing, especially children. So why the urge to make a poor recording of something you could watch instead, especially when it's not even something you'll be able to capture in detail that will bring the moment back? I understand the need to prove you exist, to be able to provide evidence that you were there, something Bishop Allen expresses beautifully in "Click, Click, Click, Click" (sidenote: if you aren't listening to Bishop Allen, go, now. I particularly recommend "Flight 180" and "The Chinatown Bus," and not just because I just got back from NYC on said means of conveyance):
I love taking pictures, especially of moments I'll never be able to reproduce again. I took hundreds in China last year, and a good many at the Inaugural Ball I went to in January. A lot of the latter pictures are not particularly good--the picture below is a case in point, though I like that I caught other people's cameras doing the same thing--but they'll something I'll be able to show my kids and say I was there:
So why the urge to record the everyday and impersonal, especially if you're not going to get good ones? Why not just be part of the crowd, smile at the kids on the their parents' shoulders and weaving through the crowd wreathed in neon, allow yourself to exhale when the lights go off, and trust that the taste of salt and ketchup on your fingers years later will bring you back to that moment in time and whatever it meant to you?