ghost on film
how it felt to see my 19 year old self on camera + self led SITD prompts
Hi friends,
This is your regular Friday Field Notes post. For those of you following along with the Sitting in the Dark self-led sessions, I’ll be sharing the link to the content as part of these Friday posts each week, just to cut down on inbox-overload. If you’re joining us live, I’ll still be sending a reminder email the night before with the Zoom link.
Ok, let’s begin - a short Field Note snapshot for you today.
A friend recently sent me a video she’d found, taken on an old-school camcorder, of me at 19, in the flat I shared with her and another friend while we were in college.
I was nervous to watch these moving ghost of myself, this manifestation of me that I had thought lived only in photos, in my memory. I wasn’t sure I wanted to resurrect this version of me (how different to now, when it is taken for granted that all of life will be recorded).
The camera and the giggling whispers as my friends push open my bedroom door, pretending to be David Attenborough approaching a wild animal in its natural habitat, catching me bent over my small study desk at the end of my bed. My hair in a messy bun on the top of my head, my thin back showing in a low scooped dark pink top. So strange to see myself. How fawn-limbed, how in my own world, how protective I was of the space the camera had invaded - Fuck off !!! I shout at my friends as I realise they are filming me.
I watched this video with the friend who had made the video. It brought so much back, seeing that small desk, seeing my head bent over my work. Seeing how self conscious I was. Of course, I was more critical, more focussed on how I was in the video, but it struck me how apart from the others I seemed, even as I loved them, even as I love them still (these two girls are still important women in my life). Watching the video, this is what I saw.
And then my friend commented how it was always at my desk I was happiest, how it still is. And her observation shifted everything just that noticeable bit. The tendency is to think back and remember all the insecurities, the missed chances, the wrong paths. To think If Only, What If. But as I let my friends observation settle a little bit, I thought - Huh - maybe I’ve always known who I am, it’s just now I’m listening to it more. Maybe this version of me has always been there, it’s just now I’m confident enough, brave enough, to claim it, step into its flow. Or, as a coach I had a conversation with just this morning says, maybe its just that now I’m ready to say FUCKIT and be happy on the outskirts of the action, hunched over my desk, lost in a world of words.
In other news
I had an idea in the shower two mornings ago, and I posted about it on Notes. The idea has had such a lovely response.
Lots of you are on board:
If you’d like to join me, just pop a comment below, or hit reply to this mail. I’m excited now to get researching all the ideas I have for the workshop!
Here’s the post that sparked the idea off for me:
Right, I’m off to roll my sleeves up and start pulling some weeds in my slowly emerging winter garden.
Layla x
I found that description of the video so moving, Layla. It's confronting seeing versions of younger selves in photos let alone film, especially if it's something we've never seen before? I felt like this when I came across a stash of photos from my teens that my dad had kept. I'd never seen them before and the version of me they showed was one I had wanted to forget. Thanks for sharing this x
loved this Layla, from a girl who was also always at her desk xx ps another yes please to a body writing workshop! x