Memories Are Made Of This

I love literature.  In fact I studied a couple of years of English literature at Victoria College just before it became the University of Victoria.  And for three years, in the mid 1950s, I and my two brothers attended a boys private school in Victoria (University School, which has been transformed over the years to St Michaels University School).  Each day opened with a staff and student Assembly at which we had to sing a hymn and listen to a bible reading.

As an inevitable result, I have lines from hymns, poems, other literature rattling around in my head.  And of course the late fifties saw the emergence of Rock and Roll, to which we all listened, so evocative lines from some of the songs of the time are also mixed in.  Overlying is all the operas, movies, TV shows, comedy sketches etc etc etc. I have watched/listened to.

I am sure that each of you also have the same kind of tangled mass in your memories (oops, that just brought up “memories are made of this”!).

So reach down and come up with a bunch of your favourite lines from wherever.

Now put together a photo that illustrates one of those lines.  You can use objects, Lightroom, Photoshop, Aperture, whatever software you like.  You can use still life, art, costumes (“a white sports coat and a pink carnation”), whatever you like, so long as it is primarily your own work (you can borrow parts of your image from elsewhere if you really must but that does lessen the challenge).

Marilyn Niemiec

Derek Chambers

From a song by Rosemary Clooney, popular in the 1950s, This Old House

This old house once knew his children
This old house once knew his wife
This old house was home and comfort
As they fought the storms of life
This old house once rang with laughter
This old house heard many shouts
Now he trembles in the darkness
When the lightnin’ walks about
Ain’t they gonna need this house no longer
Ain’t they gonna need this house no more
Ain’t got time to fix the shingles
Ain’t got time to fix the floor
Ain’t got time to oil the hinges
Nor to mend the windowpane.