Three dots have connected up for this week’s contemplation. My post last week, a TV series on BBC Two called A Life in Ten Pictures and a box of memorabilia from my travels in 1995, in which I found rather more of my life than I’d expected.
Last week I was pondering on the life/lives we might have lived inspired by two books: The Midnight Library by Matt Haig and The Dance by Oriah Mountain Dreamer. Going through the box of stuff has given me the question: what about the life/lives I have lived already? Sorting through the box is one of my decluttering jobs - what do I really want to keep and what can now be consigned to the recycling? What of my life thus far do I want to keep and what can now be compost for whatever comes next?
A Life in Ten Pictures on BBC Two is a series of documentaries about the lives of Freddie Mercury, Tupac Shuker, Elizabeth Taylor, Muhammed Ali, John Lennon, Amy Winehouse, Carrie Fisher, Bruce Lee, Robin Williams, Ella Fitzgerald, Alexander McQueen and Nelson Mandela. I’ve not watched them all yet, but they are a fascinating and sensitive insight into their lives, told by family and friends through images which capture a moment in time.
Chatting with my dear friend, Alison, about both the TV programme and the box sorting, we thought how interesting it would be to select ten images from our lives so far. I have selected five of my ten to share here.
This first one is an image of me as a baby with my sister and brother. I have chosen this one because I think this might be one of the few pictures I have of the three of us together. My sister is nine years older than me and went off to university when I was eight and my brother died when I was twelve ( he would have been 66 today - happy birthday bro!). So there aren’t many photos around of us all together.
This second photo is me in my second year at university in 1985. I was 19. A friend who was practicing his portrait photography took it. It is so 1980s!
This next one was taken on that trip in 1995. I had taken a three month sabbatical from work to travel. This is in Singapore, with my friend Mark. He and I had shared a house in London, and then he moved to Amsterdam. When he then moved to Singapore I purchased his wooden sofa and a large bookcase, which were delivered to me via a lorry carrying a consignment of magazines that I’d had printed in The Netherlands. At the time I was production director for a publishing company. I cannot imagine I’d get away with that now!
After visiting Mark in Singapore, I travelled on to Australia and met up with him again at Airlie Beach, where his parent’s lived, for his dad’s 60th birthday. I’ve lost touch with Mark, but I’d love to know how he’s doing now. And yes, I do still have his sofa and bookcase.
Number four is partying with my best friend, Claire. I think this was summer 1999 (cue the Prince song). I had some legendary parties at my house in the late 90s.
My friendship with Claire has spanned 53 years so far; we known each other since we were seven years old. We don’t party quite so hard these days! We do lunch instead.
My final photo is a shoe. I have always loved shoes as works of art as well as footwear. Even as a child I was fascinated by shoes and spent hours drawing them. I dreamt of being a shoe designer and while working in London, I took an evening class in shoe making. I never did pursue shoe design as a career, but I loved the drawings of Manolo Blahnik and hankered after owning a pair of his shoes.
When I left the publishing company in 1997, their gift to me was a voucher for Manolo Blahnik. I was ecstatic. I went off the to MB store with great excitement and discovered there were only two pairs of shoes I could possibly afford with my voucher and I didn’t like either of them. This is the shoe I bought with my voucher and I purchased the other one of the pair on my credit card. They were beautiful and delicate and I wore them only once. But I photographed them many times before I eventually sold them. My dream has been fulfilled though. I have owned a pair of Manolo Blahnik shoes.
(You can see his drawings here and download them for colouring in if you fancy yourself as a shoe designer https://www.manoloblahnik.com/gb/the-art-of-colouring)
I’m enjoying going back through old photos and thinking about who I was at that point in time and the life I was leading. It’s interesting how there are some photos where I feel really connected with the ‘me’ in the image and some where I really don’t. In some photos I hardly recognise myself - or maybe don’t want to. There is a whole line of personal enquiry there!
What would be the defining photo’s of your life so far? Could you pick just ten? How do you connect, or not, with the person you were at that point in time? Do share in the comments.
Next week I’ll be in the Creative Den, making collage of ephemera from my 1995 trip as a way of capturing that snapshot of my life.
Until then… with love from my soul to yours
Loved seeing your pictures!! Growing up in a traditional middle-class family in Southern India meant I didn’t even know how to spell PARTY, let alone go to one 😂 And all my footwear was functional and boring!
How serendipitous. . . . I just finished reading "The Midnight Library" too! The BBC2 series has been inspiring to me both personally and professionally as in my "day job" as a Funeral Celebrant (and occasional Wedding Celebrant) I have to distil a whole life down into about 30 minutes. . . . and that timescale includes at least 3 favourite songs, possibly a hymn and a couple of poems, plus a VT which is usually 25 slides of the life we are there to celebrate. I know families struggle to choose what to include and what to dismiss. For my part, writing the "life story" is a challenge I relish and enjoy. I am so glad to have joined you on the personal 10 images challenge and I'll look forward to sharing them with you next time we get our heads and hearts together. It really has been like a "past life regression" and at times wondering "was that really me???"