A human desire, a selfish one perhaps ? Preemptive stirrings of nostalgia, to collect the most valuable moments in our lives—the ones we hold dearest to our hearts. The ones that we want to remember forever; from the sly sideways glance that makes the heart flutter, to the life-changing decision that sets the course of a lifetime. The ones that we naively, futilely, and inadequately attempt to capture—once in paintings and Polaroids, and now in ones and zeroes.
All this seemingly in vain, for there is no possibility that a mere picture can capture an experience.
Where an experience is a feeling… a painting is an image.
When an experience spans a length of time… a photograph is only one second.
An experience is multi-dimensional… a painting, a photograph, only two.
An experience includes the chilly breeze that whips hair into your mouth and stings your eyes. It includes the strangely foreign but pleasantly comforting smell of your friend’s laundry. It includes your peripheral vision. It includes happiness, anger, sorrow, and déjà vu.
The experience is relative. Every experience yields a widely varying range of Experiences, as each individual perceives an event in his or her own personal way.
As a collective experiences a graduation ceremony, an individual’s Experience consists of joy, relief, and the swinging of multicolored tassels as he walks. To another: pride, anticipation, and the smell of a congratulatory orchid bouquet. Apprehension, appreciation, and the slight panic of almost losing her cap in the crowd.
Such a boundless multitude of Experiences, each one as unique as the experiencer, and all distinctly memorable. Memories so vivid at one point, but eventually fading as colors in sunlight.
...what if it were possible to capture an Experience ?
What if it were possible to view your life, frame by frame, and plant little orange landscaping flags around the moments that you want to collect ? To play the role of a movie producer, sifting through hours and hours of raw video, finding the best shots worthy of keeping as memoirs of a life well lived.
Then, to distill the Experience- whether it be three seconds, hours, or days- into a tangible, material substance. A substance like a liquid, like vanilla extract, I suppose… easily stored for safekeeping in bottles, ready for future use.
All the highlights of a lifetime, captured in little bottles of varying color and shape. Color-coded, even ? archived by date, or by emotion ? Aligned atop your fireplace, or laid sideways in a cellar latticework, as one does with fine wines ? Well, it depends on you. They’re distinctly yours, after all. Your hand-picked collection of memorable Experiences. Your life’s essence.
But to what end ? What use would it be to collect an Experience, and merely bottle it for display ?
If one were to expend the time and energy to capture an Experience, would it not be for the ultimate end of reliving it ?
Just as one injects, imbibes, inhales a drug, one could do so with material Experience… and just as a drug trip transports the user beyond the range of normal human perception, so does a dose of Experience. Take Experience, to experience it again. And again, and again…
Wouldn’t it be fantastic ?
Wouldn’t it be lovely to relive that special moment. That joyous discovery. That carefree feeling. Lying in the middle of a parking lot at midnight, trying to catch shooting stars with your peripheral vision. Running along the beach with a butterfly-shaped kite, as the sea spray blows cold air and saltiness into your open mouth. Laughing at your grandfather’s silly jokes… because now you know that soon, he will forget the punch lines, and then he will forget you ?
Wouldn’t it be phenomenal…
…but at the same time, precarious ?
Consider this… as one’s Experience collection grows, does it also shrink ? Like a graph that plateaus, and then decays, does the number of collected Experiences decreases as your life cycles by, one day at a time ?
As you collect more and more memories to relive at your own pleasure and judgment, you are inevitably committing your time to reliving them. The graduation ceremony could have been condensed into half an hour’s worth of Experience, but that is still thirty precious minutes of lifetime that you are sacrificing out of your day for that rendezvous with nostalgia. That half hour could certainly have lived another life, as a loving phone call to an aging grandparent, a walk in the crisp night air with that special someone, a laughter-filled cooking lesson with a beloved daughter… it could have played out as any one out of a thousand opportunities to make new memories and experience new Experiences.
Ultimately, what is the human experience, if not to take in as much as we can in our brief and finite lifetimes ?
All this seemingly in vain, for there is no possibility that a mere picture can capture an experience.
Where an experience is a feeling… a painting is an image.
When an experience spans a length of time… a photograph is only one second.
An experience is multi-dimensional… a painting, a photograph, only two.
An experience includes the chilly breeze that whips hair into your mouth and stings your eyes. It includes the strangely foreign but pleasantly comforting smell of your friend’s laundry. It includes your peripheral vision. It includes happiness, anger, sorrow, and déjà vu.
The experience is relative. Every experience yields a widely varying range of Experiences, as each individual perceives an event in his or her own personal way.
As a collective experiences a graduation ceremony, an individual’s Experience consists of joy, relief, and the swinging of multicolored tassels as he walks. To another: pride, anticipation, and the smell of a congratulatory orchid bouquet. Apprehension, appreciation, and the slight panic of almost losing her cap in the crowd.
Such a boundless multitude of Experiences, each one as unique as the experiencer, and all distinctly memorable. Memories so vivid at one point, but eventually fading as colors in sunlight.
...what if it were possible to capture an Experience ?
What if it were possible to view your life, frame by frame, and plant little orange landscaping flags around the moments that you want to collect ? To play the role of a movie producer, sifting through hours and hours of raw video, finding the best shots worthy of keeping as memoirs of a life well lived.
Then, to distill the Experience- whether it be three seconds, hours, or days- into a tangible, material substance. A substance like a liquid, like vanilla extract, I suppose… easily stored for safekeeping in bottles, ready for future use.
All the highlights of a lifetime, captured in little bottles of varying color and shape. Color-coded, even ? archived by date, or by emotion ? Aligned atop your fireplace, or laid sideways in a cellar latticework, as one does with fine wines ? Well, it depends on you. They’re distinctly yours, after all. Your hand-picked collection of memorable Experiences. Your life’s essence.
But to what end ? What use would it be to collect an Experience, and merely bottle it for display ?
If one were to expend the time and energy to capture an Experience, would it not be for the ultimate end of reliving it ?
Just as one injects, imbibes, inhales a drug, one could do so with material Experience… and just as a drug trip transports the user beyond the range of normal human perception, so does a dose of Experience. Take Experience, to experience it again. And again, and again…
Wouldn’t it be fantastic ?
Wouldn’t it be lovely to relive that special moment. That joyous discovery. That carefree feeling. Lying in the middle of a parking lot at midnight, trying to catch shooting stars with your peripheral vision. Running along the beach with a butterfly-shaped kite, as the sea spray blows cold air and saltiness into your open mouth. Laughing at your grandfather’s silly jokes… because now you know that soon, he will forget the punch lines, and then he will forget you ?
Wouldn’t it be phenomenal…
…but at the same time, precarious ?
Consider this… as one’s Experience collection grows, does it also shrink ? Like a graph that plateaus, and then decays, does the number of collected Experiences decreases as your life cycles by, one day at a time ?
As you collect more and more memories to relive at your own pleasure and judgment, you are inevitably committing your time to reliving them. The graduation ceremony could have been condensed into half an hour’s worth of Experience, but that is still thirty precious minutes of lifetime that you are sacrificing out of your day for that rendezvous with nostalgia. That half hour could certainly have lived another life, as a loving phone call to an aging grandparent, a walk in the crisp night air with that special someone, a laughter-filled cooking lesson with a beloved daughter… it could have played out as any one out of a thousand opportunities to make new memories and experience new Experiences.
Ultimately, what is the human experience, if not to take in as much as we can in our brief and finite lifetimes ?
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