An old album - she, like Becka's grandfather, also has a large number of slides
After last night’s performance, we encountered a charming young woman who shared with us a story that we thought was most intriguing, and encouraged her to send it to us. And she did so immediately. Thank you very much.
“Hi, I saw the play last night and, not only did I enjoy it, but it left somewhat of an impact on me. I don’t have any stories about Edna, but I was invited to share something about my family that I mentioned to one of the performers.
“My grandfather left a large collection of slides at our house so that my family and I could scan them for him. Well, one of my parents wanted to share these photos with the family on Facebook and did so. When my grandfather found out he was furious! Even though he allowed us to scan the slides, he still wanted total control on who saw them. I think the main issue was that there’s a large chunk of family history that was captured in the photos and I think he prefers to forget about it. Everyone else though, who had experienced that painful time, preferred to share and talk about that time period.
“Anyway, good luck everyone with the performance for the rest of the remaining week!”
~Becka Kinzie
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It is such a wonder to hear how someone else treats their memories. Even a greater wonder how he has so many slides of a time he wants to forget, but has yet to get rid of them. A memory that still exists, even though he may want to forget. Or perhaps he does not want to forget, he only wants to hide it. It may still have some value to him, but does not want anyone else to know. Did Edna hide anything?
I wonder if Edna has slides that she got rid of. There were so…so many in her box. We do know that she cut a photo of her at the Esquire Café in half, eliminating the man in the photo. I wonder how much else did she eliminate? Did she only leave good moments? Edna’s Archive is, as we have likely said before, is our exploration in performing memory, and performing forgetting. What if it isn’t about necessarily forgetting though? What if it’s just hiding, filing away? We all have memories like that. When does it stop being that black and white? When do we start moving in the gray?
~Miroki
