... (III)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfBmizHxJec&ab_channel=CosmicRadiation

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                I

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There is something about those old photographs -

The faded textures

Of distant footage, sepia,

The subtle blur, a slight vignette:

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A strange kind of transparency.

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II

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Modern photographs aren’t like that.

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They’re too perfect; 

Editors have to intentionally recreate that effect,

Fabricate an impression of age,

Purposefully manufacture flaw.

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                III

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They’re not the same. I could try, to replicate it;

I could go back and master the editing techniques,

All the old aesthetics that define those kinds of images …

But they’d be flat - 

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Ostentatious - lacking in all the textures,

All the qualities

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That coincide with that sense of history,

Mythology,

That differentiate a recreation, a forgery

From an ephemerally captured

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Memory - secreted and sentimental - 

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Significant only to those

Who can rightly say

That they really were

Really there.

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IV

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You can't recreate that. Truthfully, we shouldn't even try -

Just respect the old photos, the heirlooms and artifacts,

As iterations of things that happened long ago 

And that are recorded now

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So as to keep from being forgotten.

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It's better to respect that, than to try and replicate it. 

Besides, doing so does a disservice - both to the authenticity 

Of those memories, and to ours 

As the sorts that one day 

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Young aspirants 

Might also 

Go on

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Seeking feverously 

To mimic.

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