From a different angle: Photographs Donated by JC & JD

I want to thank JC&JD for donating these images of the summer parties at Orlando Road to my Web Page.

When I was a boy we had an old biscuit tin where mum and dad kept all old photos – mainly black and white but occasionally colour – which used to intrigue us; fascinate us and amuse us. Though you would find a photo of mum or dad – they seemed to us to look so different – not quite real. As unreal as they were to us those images were a real moment from my parents lives. Yet though the images were still so familiar to them they were already lost to them. They belonged to a lost past only fitfully and partially remembered.

It is the ultimate of life’s vanities and youth’s foolishness that somehow you think you will be immune from this process but as you puzzle over old photos of your own trying to remember the when and where and year in question, you realise that you are not. It seems photographic evidence is more uncertain than we suppose it to be and it nonetheless reminds us that our past is only the history we personally get to edit.

So the photos in all these galleries speak to a fleeting experience of time and place. And many of the glory days caught on film here are as lost to me as those funny old photos in that battered old biscuit box were lost to my mum and dad.

It rather reminds of the lovely song in Lerner & Loewe’s Gigi – which Creena reprised in one of her last stage appearances in Cashel. They say all I’m trying to say & so much more elegantly and touchingly.

Honore: We met at nine
Marnita: We met at eight
Honore: I was on time
Marnita: No, you were late
Honore: Ah, yes, I remember it well
We dined with friends
Marnita: We dined alone
Honore: A tenor sang
Marnita: A baritone
Honore: Ah, yes, I remember it well
That dazzling April moon!
Marnita: There was none that night
And the month was June
Honore: That’s right. That’s right.
Marnita: It warms my heart to know that you
remember still the way you do
Honore: Ah, yes, I remember it well
Honore: How often I’ve thought of that Friday
Marnita: Monday
Honore: night when we had our last rendezvous
And somehow I foolishly wondered if you might
By some chance be thinking of it too?
That carriage ride
Marnita: You walked me home
Honore: You lost a glove
Marnita: I lost a comb
Honore: Ah, yes, I remember it well
That brilliant sky
Marnita: We had some rain
Honore: Those Russian songs
Marnita: From sunny Spain
Honore: Ah, yes. I remember it well.
You wore a gown of gold
Marnita: I was all in blue
Honore: Am I getting old?
Marnita: Oh, no, not you
How strong you were, how young and gay
A prince of love in every way
Honore: Ah, yes, I remember it well

 

 

 

 

One Response to From a different angle: Photographs Donated by JC & JD

  1. Pingback: Happy New Year to the old Web Page | John Murphy