Inanimated Emotion
(or a love beyond material)
I’ve forgotten much, especially post-COVID, but an enduring image is of our first car parked steady in the middle of a storm. Nature’s berserk legions were tossing entire coconut tree branches up and around like they were mere twigs but this metal case on wheels stayed rooted. Steady. I’ve driven other cars since then, much better ones too. But I don’t remember them much; most definitely not with fondness. Just this one and all because of that situation which smelt to me of earthy steadfastness, of dependability.
I’ve spent many years photographing animals and I care deeply about our wilds. I learnt very early, even before I got into photography, not to project human behavioural traits and patterns on animals. I don’t succeed entirely, for how can I when I look in their eyes? So I let loose my vestigial anthropomorphising desires occasionally on the machines. Thankfully they have no eyes that gaze soulfully at you. The day I start thinking that they do I should be committed to an asylum. For many years now, the primary object of my inanimated affection is my camera which is also the object of focus (it’s a bit out of but let’s assume that) in the photo above. Well, the lens specifically and hence the camera by association. Here comes yet another telling incident. I was walking along the streets of Oslo early in the morning some years back taking potshots with another lens. I had forgotten to zip up my camera sling bag and out popped this star of above photo on to the pavement. And there it lay as I continued my dalliance with the other. A passerby pointed to my fallen comrade. I thanked him and told him that I was aware of my lens’s detachment but there was nothing I could do now but let it rest a bit. Oslo is a very clean city, I must say. When I was done with my brief flirting with the other lens, I picked up the fallen one and gave it a wipe. Lenses have eyes you know but but no, this one didn’t look at me like I was a miserable wretch. It was a new lens back then and the impact with earth marked it but the champ shrugged off the dent. Ah! a lens with a philosopher’s bent, a kindred thingummy. We’ve had a wild time together, my 100-400 companion and I, from the Arctic to Rajastan’s deserts, from the Himalayas to the steaming, streaming tropical forests of Sri Lanka. Although I lay my hands occasionally on others, I’ve held fast to its steadiness and dependability.
I’ve wondered about this connection and whether I’m an oddball. Well, I am in general but I wonder about this in particular. I don’t feel this way about my computer or even about my music player, CDs, vinyls etc. and music is a defining part of me. I think it’s the combination of undemanding intimacy, dependability (let’s get shit done!), and companionable silence (while getting shit done!) that one rarely gets from humans. No, not even with pets. Pets got eyes that silently scream at you “You lowdown pile of misery! How could you?” (and cats make it vocal too; I should know). But that car and this lens: nil judgement, all courtesy. As I write this, it hits me. They remind me of trees. Trees, that’s it. Like trees, they calm my overactive brain and keep my heart from ripping itself up. Comfort. They comfort me.
I wish comfort for you, dear reader; a comfort that is a relief from turmoil.
And is also a cozy bed (and a warm quilt if it’s cold).
P.S.: the car was a Hyudai Getz hatch; in pure car terms neither a value-leader nor a performance-beast. The lens is the really, really good Canon EF 100-400 mm which I still use on my new mirrorless camera with an adaptor. Personally, both exceptional.