I've been wanting to touch on the time machine aspect of recorded motion pictures with sound but I've been finding the concept/reality of it to be elusive. Earlier in the day, someone commented on one of my videos about it being almost 30 years ago and how time flies and I replied with: ..... when I first dug the old analog tapes out of the closet I'd stored them in and started digitizing them, the material had been recorded just 16 years before, and now 1991 is 28 (soon to be 29) years ago.... It's kind of a mind-bending thing for me actually... on one hand, each day in present time is a relentless march into the future, but for about twelve years now, via video time machine, it's always 1990-93 on the other end of that time tunnel. So on one hand I deal with a constantly changing world and self, and on the other, since I've been continually revisiting 1990-93 (to edit the tapes I took back then) that period of time has become a a strangely permanent part of current time (which itself is shifting).....
それと日本語のコメントがあって：「タイムマシーンを使っての撮影お疲れ様です...」、上の英語で書いてある事の近い事この日本語の返事を書きました： ありがとうございます！ - タイムマシーンに対して、最近よく考えてます。 平成二年から平成五年まで（特に平成二年と三年）必死に彼方此方に行って当時の現実を記録して... 全部のカメラが故障してしまったら、しばらく諦めて... 平成十九年からYouTubeにアップして始めて、役十二年間の毎日毎日の現実は恐ろしく将来へ進む、同時に平成二年-五年がそのまま... いつも見てるから（編集の為）毎日の現実とあの頃の現実が混ざってる感じ....。
That's pretty much what I wanted to say, but there's some other text I wrote in response to comments on YouTube videos that I saved to use in a blog sometime, so I'll toss that in here as well.
In response to this question: "When you originally recorded these videos, what were they for and what did you do with them?", I answered with:
I've always been into photography (from when I was a small child) and video was an extension of photography for me. Actually, just regarding these videos it might be more accurate to say "unfortunately video was an extension of still photography for me"... since the style, what I call a "moving slide show" never really fully escaped my still photography background. As for "why", the same fundamental reason anything is recorded - for future... referencing? The "selfie" (I really hate that word, BTW!) thing began when I got home after recording my very first videos and sat down and wrote an explanation of certain parts of the videos. It was time-consuming and I also realized that synchronizing the video material with the written text would be a real headache, so I figured it would be light-years faster, easier, more accurate, etc. etc. to just make comments on-camera at
genba. So the purpose of that wasn't "Look-look-look!! Here I am at Tokyo Tower!" for social media, it was to get some commentary/explanations into the videos straight off so I wouldn't have to do that later less accurately and more time-consumingly.
And there was a comment regarding ordinary views of Tokyo back then, to which I replied:
..... my objective at the time was to capture (for the most part) the ordinary things in Tokyo, which to my mind were quite interesting, but pretty much off the radar screens of non-residents. I was irritated by the long tradition outside Japan of ignoring the ordinary things and always focusing on anything perceived to be odd/unusual/exotic.
また、以上の事（一部）日本語で： その当時の普通記録はイベントとか観光スポットとか記録するけど、普通の物が当たり前から記録しない... 僕の考えは、イベントなどの事より、普通の事の方が記録すべきである。 現在の当たり前の事は、すべて将来に続いて行けないので...。
Well... I'll go ahead and put this into the wires. I've been wanting to write about this general topic for some time and realized today that I sort of addressed it in replies to comments on YouTube, so thought I'd make use of those comments rather than put off setting aside time to write about it from zero.
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
youtube.com/lylehsaxon
lylehsaxon.blogspot.jp/
lookback1997.blogspot.jp/
