Pictures do talk. Pictures have a way of summing up what we can't quite say, in such a way that pictures sometimes say more than words do. There's an old saying that actions speak louder than words and I believe this to be true, but what speaks louder than any regular action is the action of pressing the shutter button to take a photo or moving a paintbrush or a pencil across a page, because those are the actions that stay forever preserved, as long as someone cares enough to keep them. Because pictures aren't just a documentation of a place or a person or a group of people or a dog balancing a ball on its nose, pictures are rarely even "just" anything. For want of a better word, pictures are magical. Pictures can capture a moment so perfectly and preserve it for the rest of eternity. Pictures can tell a story. Pictures can capture a persons personality just by their face and what they're wearing and what they're doing. Pictures can stir up memories and create the greatest forms of nostalgia. Pictures can lie. Pictures can deceive. Pictures can bring evidence to a crime scene and fill in gaps. There are an infinite number of types of picture, and out of every photo in the world, every single one of them represents something different and means something to someone. The messages on the back of old photos are even better, as they do fill in the gaps or sometimes create a whole new world of thoughts and stories in your mind. Photos can be a great source of inspiration for novelists in the same sense that cemeteries are. They present you with a little information and your mind has to make up the rest, and I love that. I think that's incredible.
I'll see you tomorrow.
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