The Ambush of Time
· by Roy Edlund
After checking the weather, the surf cams, and the news headlines, I found myself scrolling through my social media feed.
As often happens, the algorithm offered up a Grateful Dead concert from the 70's.
Watching the video of Keith and Donna, Jerry, Phil, and Bobby joyfully singing and playing, I was moved by their youth and vitality. I was transported back in time.
My only decision being, was I going to hang out with my friends at the steps that night or play some pool with my friends at the pub.
And as I sat there watching, singing along, their youth on display, I was dancing along with those friends, not a care in the world, then it occurred to me that they were all gone.
There's something about that particular ambush, isn't there?
I didn't go looking for it. The feed just handed me a window into a night and for a few seconds I was young and it was loud and like me everyone else in that crowd assumed this good part would last forever.
And then mortality crashes the party.
And what actually rattled me wasn't that they died. It was that the version of me in that crowd is also gone, and I didn't get a warning when he left.
I look up at a phone screen fifty-some years later and realize that whole stretch of life went by while I was busy being alive.
It occurs to me that I've spent the past fourteen years pointing my camera at a coastline that is, itself, a tool for teaching this exact lesson.
Every wave I've ever photographed was a thing that arrived, did its one beautiful irreversible thing, and dissolved.
I've built an entire working life around the practice of catching things precisely because they don't stay.
And this momentary reflection I'm having right now is the shutter clicking.
Love from here. ❤️
Prints of the photos in this post are available in the Beach Bum Gallery on paper, canvas and metal.