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| My sister Paige, me and my sister Leigh on my first birthday |
Picture this... I am sitting at my desk with my second cup of coffee, returning emails and trying to drum up creative ideas for spreading the word about Willow Street Films, my video editing company. Perched next to me on the desk is my video camera, which is digitizing, bit by bit, a family's years worth of memories and slowly feeding them into my hard drive.
Usually I just close the viewfinder as the footage is loading. I don't need to see little Edie blow the candles out on her 5th birthday cake or her baby brother playing with pots in the tub or her father's unsteady hand as he films his wife, unaware, planting impatiens in their front garden. I will see every inch of this soon enough when I go through the material, searching for the "best" memories and consolidating them into a "memory montage", which the family and anyone who loves them, can watch in one sitting.
Sometimes, however, I keep the viewfinder open. Maybe I forget or maybe I'm a little bit lonely, spending 7 days a week alone in a studio with Facebook being the closest thing to human contact. These strangers' memories are my unlikely company. Sometimes I'll glance over and check out what's going on in the family's life at that moment, and sometimes what I see will make me stop and watch. Maybe it's the little girl, in the movie, playing with a friend or riding a bike or rolling down a hill at the park. Inevitably, these scenes evoke memories of my own childhood, and I find myself, alone at my desk, steeped deeply in emotion, as Brooklyn rolls by outside. Couldn't I just have a normal job that doesn't involve the heart and nostalgia? No, it wouldn't suit. I'm mushy. And while I like to think of myself as someone who can really live in the moment, what I've chosen to do, professionally, challenges that.
But the reason I started Willow Street Films is because I believe in memories. Our memories are, if nothing else, unique. While we may share them with others, they are informed by who we are and by our experiences. These textured paths are what makes our world, our beautiful, horrible, joyous, depressing, complex world. I believe in preserving memories and sharing them, when it's right.
I would like to start this blog off by dedicating it to my sister, Leigh. Since she died, two years ago, it hasn't felt right to reach back and remember the stories from my past, many of which Leigh wasn't even directly a part of. Being nine years older, she led a life that was shrouded in mystery to me. There are images; cigarettes hidden in sock drawers, posters of people I didn't recognize on her walls, powders and blue eyeliner pencils scattered across her bathroom. There are sounds; the beat of "The Police" droning out of her headphones while we rode in the backseat together, her laughter at a phone conversation from behind her closed bedroom door, her silence when she refused to speak to any of us on a family vacation. I was on my own little path then, but in each memory, she is always there. Any of you who have ever had a sister knows what I mean-she was always there. My heart hasn't been ready to step back. Now it is.
