Why our stories need to be written
… and why pictures are not enough!
I have recently come across those hard data:
- Instagram — 55M average Photos per Day
- Snapchat — 350M average Photos per Day
- Facebook — 350M average Photos uploaded per Day
And then I realized that pictures have become central to our communication process. I used them almost every day to keep my friends and family back in France informed of my “adventures”. I love scrolling down my timeline! However, I feel like something is missing.
I have been travelling a lot lately. I met a lot of people. We shared a moment of our lives together. Then some of us, sometime me, just left to start all over someplace else. These are memories and experiences I never want to forget.
The pictures we take, are snapshots of these moments. They are beautiful, funny, romantic, inspiring…
They tell stories. Where we have been. Who we were. Our hopes for the future. The best images of ourselves. But they are also incomplete. There is so much more than meets the eyes. Why do we make them the only testimonial of our memories? I feel like something is lost.
No picture could ever tell how safe I felt on that roof, how inspiring this sunset was to me, how much I loved that girl…
Late Sunday afternoon — June 2013 New York
So I decided to start writing letters to those I love. Letters filed with honest description of my experiences and thinking. I shared these stories, not because they are of any particular interest, but simply because I wanted them to exist.
“Write in recollection and amazement for yourself” Jack Kerouac
The web and the technology that connects us all have turned our world into a world of incomplete stories. Everything we say compete for attention. Therefore, we barely take the time for in-depth thinking and writing. In our limited time, we only decide to share and consume the information that makes us safe. That comforts us in our way of life with the idea that no matter what we are doing… it is ok.
The desire to censor is not limited to corporations and politicians. There is in most of us a desire to make the world conform to our own views. When we write, we feel closer to the truth. Converting jungle of thoughts into coherent sentences makes us ask tough questions. It makes us bleed. And sometime out of this pain, we come up with something that has the power to change men’s mind or simply amazed ourselves.
On this note, I wish you all a hard and honest writing.