Close your eyes and then it's past—story of my life

[erika]

I had something to say, and now I've forgotten it.

Oh yes.





In psych class this year, with N_____, we've watched a lot of documentaries.

Some of them are pretty scary—you find yourself watching a six year old girl named Beth converse frankly about how she wanted to kill everyone in her family, watch thieves act stupid over & over again and get caught and plead for the camera to be turned off because they're crying, but nothing is sacred. and you ask yourself How can these people do these insane things? How can these people not think they're going to get caught?

And then you wonder how can these camera men literally, physically stand to watch these people screw themselves over again and again?

It's not that you (or I) ever think that it's uneducational. Believe me, if I had any aspirations about a life of crime, I have been fully educated as to the dangers and the incessant stupidity running rampant in said life, and will no longer do it. But ... how can people just watch while other people's lives fall apart, and film it?

It takes a certain fortitude to hit record and keep recording.





Sometimes, I feel like this journal is my documentary.

Comments

[techieguru.livejournal.com]

Humans never think they'll be caught....we are always better than the other people who do the same thing. That's why punishments such as life in prison or the death penalty will never be a significant deterrent....because nobody believes they will be caught.

[joham.livejournal.com]

When you have the camera in your hand, and you look through that viewfinder and the world turns black and white (well, it does if you're using a professional camera - colour viewfinders seem to be all the rage on consumer stuff lately, to the detriment of picture quality, but I digress). Anyway, what was I saying? Yes, that when you look through that lens, you're not there. You're the camera. You're immortal. You walk up to people and film them without thinking about what you're doing, you're just looking at the shot, how it appears on the screen aesthetically. You don't really pay much attention to the overall topic of what you're seeing, just what's happening shot to shot.

It's very liberating, and it was the only way I used to be able to approach girls with any confidence because it wasn't really me, it was the camera.