Also Argument of the Day: Ray Davies is a better songwriter than Lennon and McCartney. Change my mind.

Also Mining the 60s- The Kinks – People Take Pictures of Each other.

Alternate titles as I transition. Take your pick or choose none. It doesn’t matter. The song speaks for itself. It’s typical of Ray Davies as a songwriter, melancholy set to carnival melodies. It’s funny how the melody doesn’t lighten the song. Instead it creates a cognitive dissonance, very punk rock in its own right, and utterly disorienting. My own reaction sometimes can be captured in the single line, “Don’t show me no more please.” But all the lyrics:

People take pictures of the Summer,
Just in case someone thought they had missed it,
And to proved that it really existed.
Fathers take pictures of the mothers,
And the sisters take pictures of brothers,
Just to show that they love one another.

You can’t picture love that you took from me,
When we were young and the world was free.
Pictures of things as they used to be,
Don’t show me no more, please.

People take pictures of each other,
Just to prove that they really existed,
Just to prove that they really existed.

People take pictures of each other,
And the moment to last them for ever,
Of the time when they mattered to someone.

People take pictures of the Summer,
Just in case someone thought they had missed it,
Just to proved that it really existed.
People take pictures of each other,
And the moment to last them for ever,
Of the time when they mattered to someone.
Picture of me when I was just three,
Sucking my thumb by the old oak tree.
Oh how I love things as they used to be,
Don’t show me no more, please.

I don’t know who said that art should always be a hammer and not a mirror but at less than 2 1/2 minutes this song does it. It’s like getting whacked upside the head. It leaves me feeling exposed, out in the open in a burnt flash. It also goes a long way towards explaining my fascination with still photography and particularly snaps and photographic journalism. The artsy stuff does it for me too and all of it more than motion pictures but it always comes back to the stills and the motivation behind the stills. It’s the futile stabs at trying to stop time, to capture time, to steal time, to trap a feeling in an image, to protect an emotion within a flat, 2-dimensional quadrant, to curate time and feelings, etc. It’s a fear of losing time or a time or a feeling. Stop the world, just for a second. Every picture tells a story, don’t it?

Futility.

I turn back to the boxes of photos up in the back of my closet. I turn to the vast digital archives. Was what was captured in the image even real to begin with? How long does it take before the photographer forgets what his intent was when he snapped and looks back on a photo and derives an entirely different story? Memory is such a tricky thing. Sometimes you forget. Sometimes an entirely new truth has been revealed since an image was captured. Sometimes the image itself has captured something that wasn’t apparent when it was taken.

And yet the tip of my right index finger is nearly worn to the bone and I’m still pressing the button. There are thousands of photos and certainly more to come. I’ve deleted countless photos that turned out to be different than I felt when I took them, and then instantly regretted pushing those buttons because the memories of the revelations continue to sting anyway. Might as well have the souvenirs. And then there are photos I’ve forgotten were taken and they brought back moments that still make me reel with joy.

No more deleting.

This song alone though is every fucking thing! Ray Davies was as good as it gets. This is so much bigger a song than most rock bands ever dreamed of producing.