Darling, you’re projecting

WHAT infernal bastard invented slides? I'm not referring to playground slides but those square negatives in small, environmentally unfriendly white plastic frames, projected against a wall.

My childhood has disappeared without a trace — we didn't have photo albums, only a checked canvas suitcase with years and years of slides. When my unsentimental mother decided to simplify her life, I was living in another province. My sister was there, before she emigrated to New Zealand, and she had some of the slides digitised before the suitcase was thrown away. So I have only a handful of visual memories — the ones where my sister looks pretty. I would have done the same. We all need to know: I was there, and I looked smart.

My parents preferred to photograph the art treasures of Europe rather than the family. After each of their trips, we had to sit through long slide presentations while my mother, she of the phenomenal memory, rattled off facts like an art lecturer. When I was finally grown up and visited Europe, the art museums didn't appeal to me. Been there, done that, I thought, until I saw a famous artwork face to face for the first time and fell in love — from acquaintance to beloved in five seconds. Slides are an injustice. You have to be there.

See how ridiculous I look

We were distributed among family members when my parents travelled overseas annually. This meant I had a second home, a large, noisy family where we were six children. The focus was entirely different: on family. The oldest sister was already working. She was constantly taking photos. The click of the camera shutter was the soundtrack of holidays, which I often joined. Then we would have slide evenings full of exclamations of enthusiasm or groans: “No-o-o-o-o! Look how ridiculous I look with the sunscreen and floppy hat!" In my second family, I was often projected against the living room wall, and everyone found me cute and adorable: looking down on every slide, nose buried in a book.

I think few people regret the demise of that proud tradition, the slide evening. Now, no one invites you round to look at the photos or videos of their holiday; they are posted on social media or sent via WhatsApp, so you can look if you want or scroll past.

In the 70s, you were a captive audience in a suburban living room for an entire evening. Usually, without wine — if you were lucky, there was a bland punch with floating banana slices. Chances are there were finger foods: Salticrax with smoked mussels, cheese and cocktail onions on a stick, dates wrapped in strips of bacon, shiny gherkins, cubes of buttered white bread rolled in grated biltong, and crispy chips.

The person operating the projector held all the power. He could linger for minutes on an amateur photographer's attempt at capturing hummingbirds in the garden or an approaching elephant in the wildlife reserve. If you were part of the vacation, you might catch glimpses of yourself here and there in the corner of a photo. And what a shock it was, like seeing yourself accidentally in a shop window: that piece of your soul being reflected without permission in a moment in time. Is this how other people see me? “Wait, wait, I want to look some more," you would mumble, but the projector had already moved on. It was a round magazine loaded with slides — the wheel had turned.

Halloween pumpkin

Facebook is not much different: suddenly, you recognise yourself in a group photo. You look like a Halloween pumpkin: cheeks shiny, double-chinned, cross-eyed, grinning maniacally, and there's nothing you can do about it except untag yourself. The only consolation is that the projector will move on, and tomorrow no one will look at the unflattering photo any more.

Everything here is so fleeting. Memories only live as long as the consciousness of the one remembering. It is rare for a story to be passed down through generations. There's something indescribably sad about a deceased person's photo albums. I claimed them — the albums of my eccentric, nomadic aunt who didn't have daughters. On opening nights of operas in Bloem, she shone, arm in arm with her much younger gay friends, dressed in her own creations, like Evita Bezuidenhout. Who would want them now, the slightly faded Polaroids on yellowed cardboard under peeling cellophane? I look at them sometimes and remember how she was. When we move again, I will try to let them go.

Now and then, I come across a stray slide among my books and papers. I hold it up to the light, full of anticipation: ah, a memory! Without exception, it's a statue my dad made or a watercolour painting by my mom — a still life: capers with a teapot.

What has become of all those abandoned slides, decades of non-biodegradable memories? Have they come loose from the frames and woven around coral reefs? Do curious fish eyes expressionlessly watch the Roose on Boggomsbaai beach in 1972 when a sunbeam strikes the water?

Such is life, I think like a preacher. It's projected for a while, and suddenly the show is over; all that remains is a bright light against an empty wall. We live in a telenovela, and time is a thief. It's not our soul that has been robbed, but our memories.

Forever lost are the slides of yesterday. The only thing that lives forever is plastic.

♦ VWB ♦

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