This Is This

Consider I buy my kids one of those electronic diaries where they can type in messages and addresses and keep a diary and things. It’s kind of a mini PDA thing. You can argue that kids should be out making daisy chains or learning knots, but here’s not the place. I’m going on, either with you or without you. Now get back on the boat.

These electronic gizmos- they’re pretty cool - you can even upload your notes to a real PC.

Now suppose my son or daughter writes a story and I put it on the PC where it remains for years and I transfer it to all the computers I ever own, until they grow up, get jobs and walk out the house. The kids I mean, not the computers. Although that’s a frightening thought.

Is the story I transferred still the original story? Does it have the same sentimental value as the original stick-figure drawings they magnetted (their verb, not mine) on the fridge when they were four?

I’d have to say it does. It existed as data then, it’s the same data in years to come and forever. Does it have the same quality if it has been deleted and retyped by me? Does it have more value if it’s retyped by them?

Do the piano roles cut by George Gershwin have more currency that a note-perfect performance by a virtuoso? People certainly pay money and go along to hear a live orchestra accompany the mechanical piano playing along like a bike riding all by itself in the magical snapshot ghostly moment. Is it a recording, or it is somehow live?

A little over ten years ago, I gave my dad a copy of one of his favourite photographs. I was working at The Guardian at the time as a young reporter, knowing nothing of photo agencies or anything to do with image rights, but the photo editor, a lovely guy called Eamon McCabe, got me a copy.

It’s a great photo. It was taken in front of a Harlem brownstone in 1958 and features just about everyone from the jazz world. Click the picture for a bigger version and for more information. Like how the drummers all stood together. And look at Dizzy Gillespie (one day I will tell you the story about me and him and the times we met).

How they got them all up there, let alone so early, no one still knows. Lester Young said about the shoot: “I didn’t know there two ten o’clocks in one day.”

I think my copy was taken from the same negative as the original which to my mind then made the photo seem more valuable in terms of quality, prestige or authenticity.

But now I think if it was a picture of the picture, a shot of the print, or retyped version of the story, why should it matter?

It doesn’t. All that matters is the value of the result, not the means. It depends on your definition of quality. Is the process more important than the outcome?

Is the journey more important than the destination?

See, there are no definite answers, and don’t trust anyone who says there are.

The important thing is to see the marvellous in the development - to recognise the work and to be thankful for it and where it takes you.

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Ah, my sweet Roxanne. Were it not for Camp Horseshoe I would have married you when you asked.
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This entry was posted on Thursday, September 6th, 2007 at 7:23 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed, or you can skip to the end and leave a comment yourself.