Written by When I was a kid, we would often attend an annual festival where, practically overnight, a parking lot would transform into a full-fledged carnival complete with rides. I loved riding the carousel with its magical horses and sometimes other more exotic animals that nobody would actually ride in real life, like tigers. The fun wasn’t really the ride itself as it was just a bit of bobbing up and down in place while the circular contraption spun at a snail’s pace. No, the real fun was simply getting to choose my own horse. Sometimes, the horses had names printed on them, but I preferred it when they didn’t so I could give them a name I made up for them. Since they often had golden manes and seemed a bit magical, I would try to come up with names that sounds fancy, like Xavier. I remember, when I was very little, leaning forward to whisper something into my horse’s ear. Though I recall the act, I oddly can’t remember what it was that I said. Perhaps, I was simply calling its name I’d given it or sharing some other little thing that was on my little mind at the time. I guess I’ll never really know for sure what was said, but somewhere out there, there’s a carousel horse who knows the truth.
It strikes me that there are many little mysteries of my youth. Though many stories get retold so I’m able to remember them over time, those smaller moments have all been lost. I simply don’t remember them clearly if at all. I grew up during a time long before social media and when cameras were a single-use object that required film. Today, you can capture memories and share them instantly, forever logging them in time and saving them to a computer. Videos can be shot with your phone in the moment. This is certainly far more efficient that those boxes of photos that can end up lost in a move from one house to the next. And I would love to have videos of my little self, as it might spark even more memories that I’ve forgotten. But, I also rather adore that my memories get to remain purely old-fashioned and come back to me simply as bits of family folklore or vague recollections. The feelings are all there, but many of the precise facts are now cloudy or missing entirely. It’s been nice to capture so many of the ones that have come back to me here. A doodlewash is a wonderful way to inspire bits of almost forgotten history.
Many people say that the way we present ourselves on social media is a better or more carefully refined version. Or, at worst, a version that’s simply not true at all. The latter is indeed a negative side effect of the current technology, but the former is not really that much different than the way we’ve always presented ourselves. I remember being handed a scrapbook of photos by friends or family when I was young. These were carefully curated images that had been preselected to be shown to an audience at some point. Sometimes a clever caption would appear that took a bit of extra thought to be included. This was why I thought Facebook was rather cool when it launched as it was a digital version of precisely the same experience. Of course, now, Facebook and Instagram have moved away from that entirely and added an ever-changing algorithm to the mix. This is the equivalent of looking at a lovely scrapbook and having a stranger burst into your home and flip it to page 10, before you can possibly object. It’s bizarre and has made the whole experience far too unnatural to be as enjoyable as it once was. Yet, in the way we still feverishly attempt to share things, at least, it’s rather similar to the way that we once did. Life doesn’t really change as much as we think it does, because our human nature tends to keep us behaving in very much the same way, slowly and happily spinning in circles.
Join Us For The January 2019 Art Challenge!
Click Here To Learn More!
About the DoodlewashDa Vinci Paint Co.: Cobalt Blue, Terra Cotta, Vermillion, and Aureolin. Lamy Al-Star Safari Fountain Pen with sepia ink in an A5 Hahnemühle Watercolour Book. Want to purchase a print of this doodlewash? Send me a note with a link to this post, and I’ll add it to my shop! |
 |
|
I love your carousel horse. It reminds me of a porcelain one that my mother bought as greenware and decorated for me. I know photos are considered low tech these days, but looking at what happened to floppy disks and cassettes, I have to wonder how permanent our social media memories are. I suspect advances in technology will make them disappear eventually, and we’ll wish we had those pieces of photo paper to remember them by.
I agree with you! Cd’s aren’t far behind. 🙁 It’s hard to find a computer with a cd drive. Unfortunately scrapbooking has gone digital too. Not me! 🙂
Yeah, CDs have already disappeared from our house! hehe 😉
Thanks so much, Sandra! 😃💕That’s so awesome your mother decorated a carousel horse for you! Yeah, I agree… I think we’ll always crave the tangible, but never more than when the intangible fails us! 😉
Good point Sandra! It’s fun to see record players and albums available again, who knows what’s next? Great carousel horse Charlie.
Thanks so much, Laura! 😃💕 I agree… love seeing the return of records! That sound is so wonderful and can’t be replicated any other way!
Beautiful carousel horse! I grew up in a small city with a wonderful amusement park and an incredible carousel. Not sure how old the carousel was but the beautiful horses were all hand carved and each one was incredible. My favorite was a black stallion. Many happy memories from early childhood through my teenage years.
Thanks, Mary! 😃💕 Glad this brought back lovely memories! Your black stallion sounds awesome… I bet it was beautiful!
I love this horse! Although obviously I’d be tempted by the tiger, the seal, just about any of them, really. It feels like it would be as much, if not more of a quandary now than it ever was as a kid!
Thanks so much, Jacob! 😃💕 So happy you liked this! hehe! A seal! Yesssss! I would have definitely chosen that one!
I think there would have been multiple turns so I didn’t leave any of the other animals feeling rejected. My parents probably wouldn’t have seen it the same way, though 😛
I’m sure parents were perfectly exhausted by the experience, but it was still so much fun! 🙂
I have contemplated the benefits vs negatives of having virtually every moment of your life captured for posterity. I’m quite happy, thank you very much, to not have much proof at all that my fourth grade year was perfectly awkward and ugly. Same with my seventh grade experiment with letting my bangs grow out. Not every moment of life is special and I , for one, am happy to keep it that way.
haha! I totally agree, Lisa! 😃💕There are definitely some memories I’d perfectly pleased have not been captured to haunt me today! lol
I love the thought of Little Charlie whispering in his carousel horse’s ear! I remember the excitement of choosing a horse and riding around as a child, and later, the fun of watching my kids enjoy the same thing. The music, the anticipation of each revolution, the colors and mirrors – I can bring it all back in my mind right now. Pure wonder and fun.
Thanks, Sharon! 😃💕 Yeah, the lights and music made it all seem so much more special! It was a fun time!
Nice doodlewash..I still remember the camera and its film roll that my dad had..Photos were such a prized possession those days…
Thanks, Anita! 😃💕 Yeah, those were fun days when everything was so tangible, from the way you had to make photos to the photos themselves.
Such a sweet carousel Charlie. There was a park close to where I grew up that had a carousel. It was the highlight of the park.
Thanks so much, June! 😃💕That’s so cool you had one in a park. My niece loves them and they’re still dotted around Paris. It’s fun to watch her spin around on them. I remember that glee!
Charlie says “Life doesn’t really change as much as we think it does, because our human nature tends to keep us behaving in very much the same way, slowly and happily spinning in circles.”
wise and true!!
Aww thanks, Sarah! 😃💕 Glad you enjoyed that bit. I do think we spin in circles, but they’re lovely ones. Built out of all of the things we adore most!
Yes!