Dear friends,
As much as I, like every other almost-aged-thirty millennial like to talk about how much I hate Facebook, I have to admit that I’m often seduced by the “Memories” feature. I like seeing what I was doing five, ten, fifteen years ago both for the nostalgia and the opportunity to delete embarrassing past me from the Internet.
Recently, Facebook has been showing me a photo album called “Photography!” An ingenious title, I know, but hear me out. The album is from my teenage years, and it’s full of a bunch of photos I considered “artsy” in the 2008-2011 era of my life. (Note that “artsy” was probably the highest compliment anyone could have paid me at that time; it was, of course, the precursor to wanting to be called a hipster in 2012-2016).
I started going through these photos, intent on laughing at them all; but even if they are juvenile shots, I found that there is something really valuable about each and every one of them. They are a reminder that the most important thing we can do is look at the world around us with an eye for possibility.
Take, for example, the photo above. ⬆️ I took it on a school trip to Europe. I was trying to “bring a journalistic eye” to things, which meant taking photos of random people who hadn’t asked me to. Not the most ethical of things to do. (There are a lot more photos of people in that Facebook album that I chose not to include because the subjects’ faces are a lot more apparent.) But setting aside photography ethics just for a second, notice how my teenage self was drawn to an interesting dynamic and decided to capture it! It was intriguing to see a young guy playing chess with someone so much older than him. Were they family members? Friends? Two strangers who met every Wednesday to play chess because it was the only time in their week they felt completely at peace? I didn’t know. But I took the photo anyway, and every time I looked at it, I made up another story to go alongside it.
Take this photo too. ⬆️ I caught sight of the red roses in someone’s window while I was walking down the street. I was immediately taken by all the questions I could come up with. Who were the flowers from? Who lived in the apartment? Why had this person put the flowers in that particular window? Were they hoping someone else would notice them too? It struck me, so I took a photo.
In some cases, it wasn’t just the subject that caught my eye, but the colors in the picture. In this photo ⬇️ I was at the Grand Canyon in December. I loved the green amidst the blues and the whites, and later I thought so much about what it meant for that tree to be “alone” out there. And then I thought about why I thought the tree needed to be around other trees like it in the first place. And the more I thought, the more I loved that I got to be there to see that little tree, even if my seeing it didn’t necessarily matter or make the world a better place. More than anything, it just made living feel worth it.
I even really liked all the mistakes that a camera could make, because something unexpected was something else to witness in this world.
Tons of people have written about looking at and observing things (see: Lia Purpura’s book On Looking and Alicia Kennedy’s Substack post from this week). I want to say things as brilliant as they do, but there is a whole realm of scholarship around it and I am not a scholar of such things. I give you, instead, my Facebook posts.
I’m kidding, but not quite. There is something to be said about how each and every one of us is capable of looking at the world around us and seeing it in a different way than someone else. Other people were with me when I took many of these photos. They took photos themselves. Those photos were completely different than mine. The stories I told in the shots I took were mine—and the stories I made when I revisited those shots, questioned those shots, captioned those shots, those were all mine too. There is no objective truth in these photos, but there are worlds inside each one.
So yes, when we tap into photography and observation it’s clear we are also building our techniques as writers and storytellers. But I think there’s more to it. I think there is also wonder, and I believe we need wonder if we are going to be creatives and especially if we are going to continue living in this world.
Do you remember how during the worst days of the pandemic we couldn’t leave our houses? Do you remember how after that everything seemed like a miracle? The way chocolate melted inside the cookies we were inevitably baking, the way the sun hit leaves that were somehow still growing even when we were inside? Do you remember how hungry we were for life, any semblance of it? We were so ready to capture the spirit of beauty at that time, and we so quickly turned away from that beauty as soon as “real life” came at us again.
But I’m here to tell you that the reason I want to be an artist every day (even when it is the hardest thing I have ever had to do, and I have done some hard things) is that I get to spend time with the part of my brain that is open to little joys. Looking at these Facebook photos I realize I haven’t changed much in fifteen years. I am still the same person, trying to be “artsy”— because being artsy only means trying to find magic where there must be some, as long as you let yourself believe there is. As long as you keep looking for as long as it takes to find it.
xx,
Eshani
Thanks for reading Surya Means Sun! If you want to connect with me outside of this newsletter, you can always follow me on social media @__eshani. I also have the following cool thing(s) coming up:
I’m excited to teach this ^ 8-week class with Blue Stoop in Philadelphia. The class is on Zoom, though, so anyone from anywhere can join. I hope I get to see you there! Feel free to ask me any questions about the class and register here.
I’m also teaching a FREE 1-hour workshop on June 8th on speculative fiction! It’s also with Blue Stoop. You can register for that here. (May I also say, putting this together in a newsletter is making me realize I need some headshots that are a liiittle father from my face. 😹)
And as a reminder, stay subscribed to this newsletter if you want the most up-to-date info on my book, Ravishing, right in your inbox. 💕 (If you’re curious, I’ll be working on edits within the next 6 months, and right now I’m also focusing my energy on other projects, as well as some essays that I hope contextualize and relate to the book nicely.)