Eyes Wide Open

http://polaroid41.com/eyes-wide-open/

Monday November 2nd, 2020 - 4:36pm.

With Marc, the co-creator of this project, our plan is to each post a ‘Polaroid’ every week. That’s to say a post composed of a text, an audio version of the text and a polaroid image. It’s a big undertaking: publishing something every week.

In one of our very first discussions about what this project might look like, Marc told me about the French writer and translator Alexandre Vialatte: from 1952 until his death in 1971 he wrote a short weekly article for the Clermont-Ferrand newspaper, La Montagne. Ultimately, he wrote almost 900 of these short pieces, one after the other, every week for nearly 20 years. He wrote them each Sunday and carried them to the station to be delivered by train to Clermont-Ferrand for publishing each Tuesday. There is something thrilling about the ritual of writing something every week and carrying it to the train station just in time.

Of course, we don’t have a newspaper editor imposing a deadline or a Sunday evening train waiting to transport our weekly posts...but we made a promise to ourselves. A post each Tuesday, like Monsieur Vialatte.

We don’t have any ‘rules’ about what we can write about. When we created the ‘about’ page on the Polaroid 41 site we stated: These are stories about the people we meet, about love, loss and the intimate moments that make up a life, that catch our attention and make us feel something. We can write about anything, as long as it comes from the heart. In order to publish something every week, I’ve been keeping my heart, ears and eyes open wider than ever. When a little moment grabs me, I grab it back.

This is all new to me, and I am not totally sure of the consequences of this extra ‘noticing.’ If I catch a feeling and pin it down on a page, does it lose some of its magic by being mastered and crafted? Or, if I write it, does it become more real? If something moves me and I tell you, and it moves you, too, does the moment double? Does it grow? I hope so.

So far, I like the extra noticing. I like paying attention. Life has been so restricted this year, and as I write this here in France we are at the beginning of another month minimum of lockdown. It’s oppressive. Part of me is wondering how I will find things to write about over the next four, six, eight weeks while my world is reduced to the four walls of our apartment, to one hour outside per day in a maximum radius of 0.6 miles from home...and yet, I am optimistic. My world is very small right now, so I am turning the dial way up on my ‘noticing.’ This is my plan: I will keep my heart open. When I feel something, I will feel it deeply. If it stays with me, I will come here to tell you about it and then maybe you will feel it, too.

http://polaroid41.com/eyes-wide-open/