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Prague, INXS, and Dreary Winter Weather.

Posted by Tiff in Photography | 2 comments

What brings back memories for you? Is it certain smells? Taste? Images? Sounds?

For me, it’s all of the above. And while I have a horrible working memory and can quickly forget things before .34 seconds have elapsed, if I can smell/taste/look/hear something tied to the memory then I can remember it with freakish detail. I mean freakish as in almost photographically. What everyone was wearing, the typeface of the passage of text and where words were on the page, who was holding what in their hands, etc. If I knew how to control what memories were tied to what triggers, I would train myself to have a photographic memory all the time and then hire myself out to the FBI or CIA or something and become a super spy. That would be cool! At the very least, I would never again forget appointments or where I put things or what someone just said to me. Unfortunately, I can’t control it at all, and am just as liable to have forgotten everything than remember it all.

For some reason this week has been full of memory triggers of the time we lived in Budapest. For starters, I’ve been listening to a lot of INXS. Their album “Kick” blew my 15 year old mind back in the day, and I literally wore that tape out. It broke in the middle due to excessive play in my awesome walkman. The 80′s were good in a lot of ways…the music, the clothes, but most of all…for me at least…the hair. The big, curly, frizzy hair. Mine does that naturally, as did Michael Hutchins’ hair apparently. So everytime I saw him in his videos I knew I could rock his look and be seriously cool. Jennifer Aniston and her flat iron ruined it for me half a decade later…damn her! But for a while, life was good for me and my puffy hair.

I love the video for “Never Tear Us Apart” not only for his hair and wardrobe, but also because it was filmed in Prague. I watched it over and over and vowed one day I would go there and twirl around on the Charles Bridge like the girl in the video. And I would look longingly at the horizon, and walk in slow motion, and generally replay all the scenes from the video out in my real life. Because ’87 was before internet, I actually had to go to a library and work with the dewey decimal system to find books about Prague to check out so I could learn about it. ’87 was also before the fall of the Iron Curtain, so Prague was still in what was called Czechoslovakia, and I was worried that I’d never be able to visit since it was under Communist rule.

So, yadda yadda yadda, 13 years later I DID go to Prague, in what had turned in to the Czech Republic. And I DID walk on Charles Bridge. Both the bridge and the city were even more beautiful and magical than I’d even imagined.

However, I DID NOT twirl on the bridge. I also DID NOT recreate the video. Instead I was busy trying to find bananas and wafers to keep Golfer, who was 1 at the time, happy. I was trying to find a replacement stroller for him since the charming cobblestones pummeled his old one into oblivion. I was also trying to find cool things for Naturalist to see, who was 4 and not in to a tour of Prague based on INXS videos. Actually, that trip kind of sucked in an ‘everything go wrong’ kind of way that sometimes happens when traveling with small kids. Looking back, the trip taught me a lot about maintaining a certain amount of militant optimism…both on trips and in life.

In any case, cold and overcast Prague in the winter was amazing. I’ll have to go back one day and experience it again. Not only to see the things I missed the first time around, but also for the twirling. Oh yes, there will be slow motion walking on the bridge!

In honor of Prague, and INXS, and dreary winter weather, I created a photo that reminds me of all three….taken on a cold and awesomely dreary day in Malibu, when a very perceptive bird realized he could make my picture so much better if he took to flight right as I clicked my shutter. Which then made me think of one of the best lines of any INXS song. Et voila! It all came together to form one little picture that makes me remember so much.

The picture before, straight out of camera (sooc), and then after I adjusted the contrast, brightness, and color curve in Lightroom as well as added some textures in Elements: