I feel I’ve been writing this forever in my mind - never penning down my thoughts, letting them get lost. She Don’t Dance No More - a somewhat intro and written piece. (more word vomit), is an ode to memoirs, losing parts of yourself and change. 

I’ve always loved looking at photo albums and watching home videos full of life from a young age. The style of the photos, the outfits, locations. Asking questions like “When was this?” “Why wasn’t this person here?” “Who is this?” But careful to not be invasive. I’ve written about home videos here, looking into what happened to the art of home videos and what they look like now. 

I saw a film - Aftersun, a while after starting my journey to digitalize my family archive - 100s of photos and VHS tapes, some damaged, which changed my perception of what I was looking at changed, I started looking for something. Analyzing tapes that would make me understand complicated things. It sent me into a slight crisis - I had to stop and take a step back. I kept seeing a younger version of myself, thinking “Why wasn’t I checked for Dyslexia?” “Why did that happen?” “Why wasn’t I treated the same?” but I digress, i may dive into this another time (maybe, I don’t know)

To conclude, below is a short piece about what reminiscences all mean to me:
I do it for the memories I never got
And the memories my loved ones never got to have

It’s been years since these have been last touched
Catching dust and oil in the back of the cupboard
Fragments of time hidden away
Slowly fading and becoming distant memories
Watching back is like time-traveling
Rediscovering traces of a familiar time, my childhood
Am I allowed to be here?
Looking at a time torn from my life
A world I don’t have access to
Seeing a life I felt nostalgia for
Yearning for something I’ve forgotten
Wanting to be whisked away
From the uncontrolled life of now
And an unknown future

It’s like being in an art gallery but I can’t see anymore
I can’t think, feel
I’m in a frozen state
A shell of something that was
When did the dance stop?

“Why do you always have a camera on you?”
I’m capturing what I will never have twice

Here are some of the things I read/watched that explore some of the themes I’ve written about.
Film: Aftersun, The Iron Claw, Four Daughters
TV: One Day
Theatre: Shifters at Bush Theatre
Thanks for reading.