The Urban Optimist.

If I am day-dream believer who seeks comfort walking in the fields and catching butterflies, then my friend Giovanni is most at home at a bar attempting to solve his problems in the depths of a whiskey glass, seeking inspiration from the burning embers of his cigar, and writing poetry at 4am. 

Often our views my be the complete opposite of each other’s, but we both enjoy poetry and reading and writing; we both cling onto our beliefs that metaphors can exist in every day life. So have a look at his blog here, and see what you think.

I do not think

that we can ever look

objectively

at the past

like the historian thinks that he can.

For the defining characterisic of a moment in time

is the confusion

and uncertain complications

of the present.

People seem to view the idea of ‘art’ as something that these strange, mysterious people called artists create – as though they perform some sort of conjuring act; magicians with canvas and paint.

I was thinking about art and what it means – can anything truly be created? I remembered a quote I once read: ‘If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.’ 

In the same way that we ‘create’ an apple pie, all we are ever doing is mixing and manipulating a series of ingredients that we have selected. 

Therefore, art is surely just selection – the artist is someone who can look at the confused and messy world, and extract from it the purest of ideas: the tiniest points of interest that would otherwise go unknown.

And what’s more, the artist was able to recognize them as beautiful, when no-one else did.

Just like the Andy Warhol above; he has selected one second in time – a car crash – and conveyed through repetition and distortion, an interpretation of events. He has taken horror and chaos, and made it beautiful.

However, I think that most of all

from these pure ideas taken from a messy world, the artist forms an idea of truth.

And perhaps that truth is something that they created all alone.

I keep having an indistinguishable nostalgic longing for home. It arrives in different waves and in varying flavours, but today I want so much to be on holiday in Wales, with the rain pouring down outside as it always did, the smell of damp wetsuits encrusted in sand, and the hunger for fish and chips. I want to be on the beach as a child, running up and down those slippery, seaweed-clad rocks, fishing for crabs and prawns, feeling freezing cold and feeling free.

Young child,

I tell you with the certainty of my heart

That it is ok to be confused,

Ok to be lost in a maze of your thoughts

As long as your goal is, one day,

To find your way out.

Value these days of confused navigation,

Because they are golden;

Because true beauty can only be seen

Through the medium of mystery.

It is only when we find the answers

That things cease to be interesting anymore.

But if we never find the answers

We won’t know what we were searching for.

I am waiting for something,

I think,

to change.

For everything,

these days,

seems to stay the same.

Some find comfort in monotony,

but i,

find adrenaline

in the unknown.

Leave me in my prison of bound paper

Stained in factual lies

Because these are what keep me safe -

They protect me when reality questions

My well-researched truths.

Recently I have come to the realization as everyone eventually does, that the more we have hardly ever makes us more ‘happy’.

We can stuff ourselves with food, buy as many clothes as we want, do no work, do everything that brings us pleasure and nothing that brings us pain.

In theory, we would be full of happiness!

So many people talk of the day that they retire from work, so that they can just do the things that make them happy…

But in reality, how can this really make us happy? I find that whenever I go through a period of acting like this I eventually end up feeling depressed and discontent. Humans need to have some innate purpose in their life; and it is not eating chocolates in front of a TV set. Without fufilling the purpose that they have created for themselves, without going through pain to get there, without having the hope and belief that some day they will achieve it, how can they ever expect to be happy?

What even is this so called happiness anyway? I have come to realize that people talk about it as though it were objective, as though that they will wake up one day and will have reached happiness, they can tick it off a to-do list like any other goal.

But, as the old cliche phrase goes, money (or anything else material) does not bring happiness.

Of course we all know that!

…don’t we?

I think that, sometimes, we all need a reminder that happiness can only ever come from within. There is nothing that you need to wait for, no boundary whatsoever from achieving this state. You can simply decide to be happy.. now! So why delay it for one more second?

‘No one is in control of your happiness but you; therefore, you have the power to change anything about yourself or your life that you want to change.’

- Barbara de Angelis

There are times for all of us when we lose touch with our inner-selves: our sense of humanity, and any meaning or purpose that we once had.

Sometimes I feel the opposite of what the Pigeon Detectives once said, ‘everything is going wrong, but we’re so happy’: sometimes, when everything is going right, why are we so sad?

Sofia Coppola’s new film, Somewhere, tells the story of Johnny Marco, a Hollywood actor who seemingly has it all; fame, fortune, adoring fans and beautiful women, but has lost all sense of what it means to be human.

We can have fast cars and champagne, but it means nothing without a sense of purpose in our lives and self-acceptance. It seems so obvious and cliché, the idea that money and fame does not bring happiness, but I think that Somewhere deals so brilliantly with society’s confusion about this. People do imagine film stars living a ‘perfect’ life: why do we have such obsessions with celebrity culture if we do not (at some level) believe this? In reality, being famous often means to be lonely.

The film starts with a (very long) shot of a Porsche driving around a race track over and over.. and over. In the cinema you can feel the audience getting bored, and through this we feel Johnny’s boredom, too. He is literally ‘living life in the fast lane’, but no matter how fast he drives, he is getting nowhere.

But something changes for Marco, his 11-year-old daughter, Cleo, comes to stay with him in his hotel suite. Cleo acts as a parent to her father, cleaning up after him and making macaroni and cheese. He sees the beauty of the innocence in his daughter, and slowly realizes that he needs to get out of this destructive way of life.

I guess that when we are lost in life, love can put us back on the right track again. Without some form of love for a person, place or even idea, we lose what it means to be human. Somewhere is such a touching story of how a person who is nowhere slowly begins to realize how he can make his life better for himself.

The film ends with Johnny dropping Cleo off at summer camp, and driving his Porsche out of chaotic LA into the desert. He is driving away from his materialistic misery. He parks his car on the dust road and starts walking. He doesn’t know where he is going, but unlike the beginning of the film, he is going somewhere, rather than nowhere.

This week I am on a film set. In fact I am there right now; sat in the cold waiting for the camera to be set up so we can do a take. The illusion of a film set is that of glamour; perhaps a sneak peak into the lives of the few. The reality couldn’t be more different. It is not that I didn’t know this before, but the fact that I am sitting here in a London car park watching what so many people see as glamour, I realise the true extent to which our perceptions of other people’s lives are distorted.

Grit and glamour. They seem to come hand in hand: if we want glamour, we usually have to toil and work and go through pain to get there. If we seek comfort in laziness; we often end up living in regret and a life less than successful. I guess at the same time, a life of pure glamour can never be fully appreciated as such anyway.

In our life, I think that the only type of glamour that can truly exist is in the mind; if we create a life that is glamorous for us, we will be content in the idea of it for our own satisfaction. A beautiful life is one that has chosen to look past the imperfections.

It seems to me that this is an illusionary world of real grit… I look forward to returning to the real world of illusionary glamour.

It is always hard to find out the true origin of things; how did the earth come into existence, what came first: the chicken or the egg? What I have been thinking about recently is the idea of our own identity; how exactly did it come about? When it comes to our own sense of identity, do we just live our life without thinking about it, and our identity is shaped as a product of this? Or, do we consciously determine who we are and then act accordingly?

I suppose I don’t know which is better, or rather, I don’t know which is worse. I think that it is important to ‘determine’ yourself: if we are going to be successful surely we cannot just wander through life aimlessly, hoping that something good will happen. Therefore, perhaps we should think carefully about who we are and who we want to be; determine who we are and act in accordance with that.

This is the way that I find myself living my life, i suppose for those reasons. But in a way I have come to realize that by doing this we restrict ourselves; once we have a detailed sense of who we are and who we are not, we can stop ourselves from acting in certain ways because it simply ‘isn’t us’. ‘Oh, I don’t wear clothes like that; it just isn’t ‘me”. ‘I don’t go to those sorts of restaurants – not my scene’.

But what if, really, it is the sort of thing that we would do, we are just stopping ourselves from doing it because it does not fit in with the identity that we have created in our minds?

By creating such an identity, perhaps we are stopping ourselves from becoming who we truly are.

After this deep philosophical realization,

I bought some bright pink lipstick and I am going to see where it takes me…

Jez Kerr is a member of the post-punk Manchester band, A Certain Ratio, and is a regular UrbanOptimist reader. Managed by ‘Mr. Manchester’ himself Tony Wilson, A Certain Ratio formed a major part of the British Joy Division era. He currently has a solo career and is a lyricist. In this exclusive interview, Kerr takes time out to talk about life: past, present and future…

Name: Jez Kerr

Addictions: music, the gym, cigarettes

Joy Division… made a big impression on me when I was young, especially Ian’s performances. I think the gigs we played with them were, to this day, the most powerful experiences I’ve ever had watching bands.

As a child I was… interested only in football, but I did sing along to the radio, and at the age of 6, when left alone for an hour at my Grandmas, I had my first musical experience, with her baby grand piano and the sustain pedal.

The best city in the world is… yet to be built? New York.

I believe in… the tenacity of the human spirit.

I think that life is… whatever you make of it.

The thing that brings me the greatest happiness is… being happy, seeing those I love happy, writing a great lyric.

Writing lyrics makes me feel… ill, and then happy, then possibly ill again, much later.

My dreams for the future are… a future, for next generations. I dream that one day we will find a solution to conflict.

God is… whatever you believe God to be.

I don’t ever want to… stop making mistakes.

‘Winners’ are… those that cope well with losing, not the ones who see themselves as winners, they are usually boorish and enjoy the aspect of someone losing when they “win”.

My past experiences have made me realize that… life is arbitrary, so try and enjoy the good times; it’s always later than you think.

My favorite quote is… there are many (that isn’t a quote).

-”very very rarely” – Rob Gretton

-”….you haven’t got the guts to be what you wanna be. You need people like me, so you can point your fuckin finger and say ‘thats the bad guy’. So, what that make you, good? You’re not good, you just know how to hide, how to lie.” -Al Pacino in Scarface

Nostalgia is… comforting? Safe?

I read The Urban Optimist because… it brings out the 8 year old in me.

Get updates and View exclusive video footage on the Jez Kerr FB page

Listen to Jez Kerr’s new song, Play Something Fast, by clicking here.

The older that I get, the more I seem to hear the word ‘no’. Instead of seeing the positives and how something could be made to work, ‘grown-ups’ tend to want to assert their intelligence by pointing out possible problems that could potentially happen. Instead of saying ‘Yes We Can’, the world seems to be in a mode of ‘no we can’t’.

But something quite interesting happened to me today.. I went for coffee with two of my friends, and we decided to try out a new independent deli. We got talking about how we should invent a cafe or restaurant that is completely out of the ordinary, and how we are fed up of the generic chains of Costa Coffee and Starbucks. We started having a brain storm about how you could make the most interesting and unusual restaurant possible, and with it we became children again. In my family, we call this type of conversation ‘thinking like an eight-year-old’!

In our restaurant, we will have trick-mirrors on the outside windows, slides and fireman’s poles, rotating seats so that you can speed-date whilst you eat, toilet cubicles with glass that can be seen out of, but no-one can look in, televisions in the tables, and so much more! We had such fun, there was nothing that couldn’t be done, everything was possible. One of my friends thought of a restaurant that represented a human life in reverse, a starter would be in a granny-flat themed room eating corn beef, and desert would end in jelly and ice cream sat in a playroom! The idea is that instead of leaving a restaurant stuffed and tired, you would be revitalized! I think it should be called ‘Youth Revisited’.

It just felt like a breath of fresh air to talk like little kids again and dream about what could be, and believe that it could happen. I guess that this is really a good way to spend your life, by thinking as a child would, by thinking that anything is possible…

…after all, nothing is impossible once you have the ability to believe!

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It’s strange, how mere letters and words and the way that we arrange them, can mean so much and say so much. Andy Warhol, in my opinion was an absolute genius in his art, but often his inability to justify and describe his creations led to people casting off his work as ‘junk’ and meaningless. Similarly, when I watch Sofia Coppola’s films I see such deep emotional beauty in them. However when she is interviewed, I feel that she is unable to get across her ideas about the film enough to do them justice. Poets, however, are masters of words. They make them more beautiful in the way that they arrange them and derive power from mere letters.

Last night, I watched an italian film called ‘Il Postino’ (The Postman). It is such a touching film about a simple postman who uses only simple words, making friends with a famous poet who is loved by women. When the postman falls in love himself, he is taught by the poet to use metaphors in order to seduce his future wife.

I think it is so beautiful how it shows that, with the help of words, we can access an area of our mind that we do not otherwise go; after learning about metaphors we can think on a higher plain, we can start to transcend reality through thought.

The postman, instead of accepting his life as it is, viewing it from face value, starts to see the beauty in his world. In the above clip the poet talks about how beautiful his island is, but the postman never saw it as beautiful. After he learns about metaphors, he can appreciate the true value of nature and life.

My favourite part in the whole film (above clip) is when the poet and the postman are sat on the beach, and the postman said that he ‘felt like a boat tossing around on those words’, and the poet tells him that he has just created a metaphor. I think that this is a turning point in the film, and then the postman baffles the poet by asking him if this world is just a metaphor for something else.

Is it?

Perhaps the whole film is a metaphor for something else; the idea that learning a new way of seeing things will change the world around you: life is not what it is, but rather how you look at it and how you describe it. The world is subject to our interpretation.

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Travel is a strange thing. Or is it staying still that is so odd? I think it is so interesting that we humans place such a great emphasis on geographical location and how we idealize places that we have not yet experienced.

I am definitely guilty of that. I always dream of ‘running away’ to foreign countries, seeing new things, having new opportunities, being an alien with no past, just a future. I idealize Paris and New York, and see them as places where you could not possibly have any problems, because you are there! Obviously this is not true – maybe it’s the media that makes us think like this. But at the end of the day, I think that a place has the ability to change, in essence, me. Holly Golightly changes her name and her home but all she does is ‘ends up running into (herself)’

Yesterday I moved back from christmas break in my home town to university, and I was so upset to leave because I knew that for a while I would not see my family, have home comforts, and be with ‘my roots’. But at the same time if I didn’t leave I know that I would have gone crazy, because all I want to do is ‘see the world’.

I guess that with everything in life, all that we want to gain requires a giving up of something, but we have to do it for our own sense of adventure, experience, and self-improvement. At the end of the day, I believe that anything that causes us upset or pain is deeply rooted in fear, and fear is just an illusion. So we just need to embrace our upsets and remind us why we are taking a chance; why we are really doing it. After all, tramps like us, we were born to run.

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Why do we force ourselves to do the thinks that we hate, in the hope that one day it will get us somewhere?

Today, my answer to this question is ‘society’.

Looking back at my 19 years of life so far, I seem to have aimlessly trundled through the grades at school; never being the best, never being the worst. And now I find myself at this strange place; some call it heaven, others call it hell, I like to think of it as a waiting ground – a limbo between childhood and ultimate freedom. It is widely known as ‘university’.

It was all going fine, and then suddenly over my blissful christmas holidays I realized that I had 4 essays and 3 exams to complete in a week. yummy.

Sat here knowing that I have to do so much work on political, economical and philosophical issues that go way over my head, I am starting to ponder what I really love, and in this very short life we live, why am I not doing it right now?

I love Sofia Coppola films, writing, melacholy music, camping, fashion, photography, art, poetry…

…how did I get so far away from all of this?

So here is to all of those people who are feeling the same way as me right now.. a couple more years of toil and we WILL get a gypsy caravan and write poetry in the forest ….. but I would quite happily settle for a penthouse in NYC ; )

lovess

the urban optimist.

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Is it better to be isolated from society, but do the things you love, than cling on to conventions set for you and stick with them no matter what?

I seem to be doing the latter. I’m stuck between two worlds. I’m in limbo.

Why do we refrain from doing the things that we love, the things that make us who we are – just to appear to be ‘normal’?

Normal is boring!

Sometimes I find myself living by social norms: pretending to like the music i should like, pretend to want to do the sort of things I ‘should’ want to do, I even convince myself…

But deep down, I have my own identity, I like old movies – not chick-flicks, candle light dinners – not clubbing, and hot chocolate – not vodka.

No one got anywhere by being the status-quo, except perhaps that famous band called ‘the status quo’…

Andy Warhol, perhaps the most controversial and successful personality of his time, once said:

‘You have to do the things that average people don’t understand, because those are the only good things’

So perhaps for my new year’s resolution, I will make a pledge to do the things that other people do not understand, the things that make me happy, and hopefully it will get me somewhere!

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Click here to watch Laurel Pantin’s Test Shot

I lalalala-love Jake Davis Test Shots. He has a way of making us feel like we know the stranger who he films for about 60 seconds. He makes them look so special and unique and deep and someone who we want to get to know.

It is the antithesis to the idea that we walk past hundreds of people on the street everyday and treat them all the same, we do not care about the little things about them, we just want to be able to get along with our lives.

Jake Davis has this incredible knack for taking all of those millions of people, and zooming into just one of their lives for a few moments, adding fitting music and a place that is important to them.

I want to commission one for myself!!

Being a student is great.. until you have to do work. For me it is in the form of 3 philosophy essays this week – yum.

So in my despair I asked my daddy to text me an essay writing tip of the day hehe.. and I thought today’s tip was quite applicable to life in general!…

‘Imagine you are in a helicopter. Fly above the subject matter. Look down upon it. Say what you see.’

Once I had tackled my essay with this method, I started to think about it in terms of my own life. If we step away from our own bad moods, emotions, worries, menial tasks; how do we see our life? Is it good, bad, ugly?

I find that people like to confide in me about their troubles and to ask what they should do, and it comes naturally to me to be able to suggest solutions. But when it comes to my very own troubles, I keep them hidden in my shell. I find them so hard to solve because they are tied up with all of my tangled emotions. (In Philosophy of Mind we call this subjective analysis  I’m such a geeek)

But what if we learned to step back out of our own minds and look at the problems as if they were a stranger’s? Surely we would know what to do? This reminds me of the lyrics to ‘Going for the Gold’ by Bright Eyes:

‘And if I could talk to myself like I was someone else
Then maybe I could take your advice
And I wouldn’t act like such an asshole all the time’

I’ll leave you with the song… click here

So today, try looking at your own life from a helicopter, say what you see, work out what you should change, and tell me what you think!!

Leanne.

This picture epitomizes everything I love about the winter months; the dark blue hue that covers the world at 4 o Clock, the lights on the street and in the windows, the hustle and bustle of people wrapped up in woolen clothes.

There is a certain nostalgia about it; even when you are in the midst of it all, when you are that girl in the photo, you are still longing for more of the feeling, there is something that you still cannot capture, because some of it is held in the past.

My mind goes back to past winters, when I longed for the future, when I thought of the past. I think that traditions are just this – my mind can never focus on the present because it is always reminded of what was before.

I want to have an in-the-moment feeling, where you do not want to be in the past, you do not want to be in the future, you want to be in the present, always and forever.

I’ll leave you with a song : ) Autumn Leaves

Wow. I was listening to the above song whilst writing this, I wasn’t listening to the words but as I was writing I had my late Grandad in mind the whole time.

I have just read that the song was written about Paolo Nutini’s Grandad when he died.

I’m not sure what is meant by ‘everything’, but these words probably the most comforting things for me to hear. Every time I hear someone say it, I am immediately soothed. I do not know why because I’m not quite sure what I am worried about, but to me it is just so powerful.

I have just been to see the chick-flick ‘Life as we Know it’ this evening, it was quite good, but the best thing I got from it was hearing the song ‘For you now’ by Bruno Merz. The melody is so mesmerizing and I just LOVE the lyrics. I feel so deep in thought, so mellow and calm.

But it has made me think; are we in our sub-conscious always on edge,constantly thinking that everything will fall apart? Do we need to be reassured every so ofter that everything actually will be alright? Maybe it is just me. But I think that sometimes we all just need the reassurance that our parents gave us as children and the feeling of safety.

I want to make a piece of art related to this, not sure how but I just want the big, bold, words: ‘everything will be alright’.

When I was 7, all that I wanted in the world was a treehouse.

I wanted it so bad that I broke my arm trying to build one.

The dream was to have my own special place, somewhere to daydream, sat above the world that I did not understand.

Now what I want is a penthouse apartment. When did I get so materialistic?

People say I’m shy, nice, quiet, polite, a dreamer..

..but I will get what I want even if I have to break my arm in the process

I will do it for the 7 year old in me that still wants to sit above the trees. : )

…because,

so I’m told,

these streets

will make you feel brand new

and

the lights will inspire you.

People say

that it’s the place where dreams are made of

well,

I have dreams

I guess that I should go to that place

if I want them to be ‘made’…

that magical place

the city that never sleeps…

but when daytime comes, and those lights disappear into the light

and the truth

everything is all of a sudden

not so fabulous.

You know those days, the ones where you feel like nothing is meant to be – you wish resentfully that you had a different job, or that you had not done this and that. The days when you feel like your life has been eaten away by past mistakes like bugs to a sandwich. Your mistakes, your situations, your behavior has put you into an inescapable prison.

You’re desperately finding a key for the door…

But where is the door?

The truth is, those bars are welded in your mind, and nothing else.

And the key? The key is just about altering your mind to realize that there is no prison, and learning to just ‘let it be’. I always listen to the song ‘I must belong somewhere’ by Bright Eyes whenever I feel like this, because it makes me realize that some things are unavoidable, good or bad, and that we should almost celebrate them rather than complain, and therefore unlocking that prison in our minds.

Click here for the song…

or here for a cover version which is particularly good : )

and click here for the lyrics – very important to read!

I love the situations that Oberst puts the listener in: ‘the old town drunk on his wooden stool’, maybe we would usually frown upon this, put when put with all the other situations it makes us think that we live in a beautiful world already, we do not need to alter or force things. Laissez faire.

It makes me feel like I am just a small part of a much bigger plan – all I need to do is just flow along in the river of life, and appreciate things just the way they are.

I am not what you would call a ‘content’ person – I like to always be searching for the next challenge or the next dream, but when I listen to this song, it is as thought I have been injected with some sort of ‘contentment’: I just want to ‘be’.

So next time you are feeling like the world is some sort of conspiracy theory and is out to get you, just listen to this song – it will make you feel better right away!

you’d think after 18 years I’d be used to the spin.

My friends say that I’m strange. But in a world with 6.7 billion people and growing, do we not all just need a way to be unique? For me it’s expressing myself through my clothing and my room – visually, everything I see of ‘myself’ must be “me” otherwise I feel like my identity is non-existent.

The realization of this in the form of a line from a Conor Oberst song (see title) made me wonder; is everyone the same? Do we all just want to be more than a face in a crowd? Of course, the answer to this is ‘yes’, but if not visually from our houses etc, then how? Sometimes when I catch a glimpse of another person’s world; their house, their history etc.; I struggle to find any trace of an ‘identity’ in the complex sense of the word. Perhaps it is just that I, as a teenager, need to establish this, whist older people have learned to purely exist on the foundations of other things?

Is identity just a phase? Or, even is it merely an illusion to stop insecure people like myself from getting lost in the crowd?

What do you think?

‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’ is just one of those iconic films which every girl should watch. I personally love everything about the film, the glamor, the music, the comedy; but what strikes me most is Holly Golightly’s search for identity.

Her public persona is ‘party girl’: beautiful, mysterious, and confident. But in reality she is just a shy little girl; trying to make a compromise between her longing for ‘the simple life’ and her desire for money, as she admits herself, ‘I need money, and I’ll do whatever I have to do to get it’.

The battle between these two identities is confirmed by the use of her two names, ‘Holly Golightly’ and ‘Lula-Mae Barnes’. It is as if she is constantly trying to run away from herself and her mistakes. My favourite lines in the film/book is when she is in the taxi, just before she throws Cat out in the rain. She tries to expain to ‘Fred’:

‘I’m not Holly, I’m not Lula-Mae either. I don’t know who I am. I’m like Cat here. We’re just a couple of no-named slobs. We belong to nobody and nobody belongs to us – we don’t even belong to each other!’

I feel like these lines epitomize what the story is about – finding yourself: Holly hasn’t yet. She needs to abandon her fears, and her dreams which she thinks will bring her happiness – those of money and gold digging.

It is something about Holly that we can all associate with. Do any of us really know ourselves? Do we all have dreams which in actuality are harmful to our happiness? At the beginning of the film, Holly announces, ‘when I find a place where me and things go together, well, I’ll buy some furniture and give the cat a name!’ Perhaps it’s not a case of finding that place, but creating it. So maybe if we all bought the furniture, things would come together and we would create who we are and where we belong. : )

maybe…

it’s just a thought!

And on the way home…

I held your camera like a bible…

Hoping so bad that it…

Held some kind of truth.

‘Don’t count on the camera that hangs round your neck, cause it will never remember what you choose to forget.’

-Conor Oberst

His quotes are just so clever and emotive. This is one of my favorites because it contradicts the old saying that ‘the camera never lies’ – that may be still true in some respects, but at the end of the day we are selective in which truths we want to capture. Even if it is a bad memory, we have chosen to remember it. I guess I am talking literally about taking pictures and metaphorically in the way that we ‘capture memories’, too.