The year was 1973 and 5 months before I was born Paul Simon released his lead single Kodachrome from his album, There Goes Rhymin’. The chorus of the song has the lyrics:
They give us those nice bright colours
They give us the greens of summers
Makes you think all the world’s a sunny day, oh yeah
I got a Nikon Canon* camera
I love to take a photograph
So mama Mother Nature*, don’t take my Kodachrome away
*Paul Simon has made an appearance in a previous GlobeTrotter blog (“Dear Stranger from Tipperary”). So I like to think we are establishing a relationship – albeit one-sided – and that I can take the liberty of a slight tweak to his chorus to better represent me.
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Kodachrome was the first colour film produced by the Eastman Kodak Company and became available in 1935. Many of our most iconic photographs from the 20th century were captured with kodachrome and certainly all of my personal photographs (pre-DSLR) were taken with my 35mm kodachrome film. It was the most predominant film used by anyone who owned a camera until the saturation of the digital market when it was officially retired in 2009.
Figuratively, Paul’s song is a commentary on how we feel about our memories. Memories are formed by taking information, storing it and then recalling that information. Using the word kodachrome in the song is no different than the idiom of a person who looks at things through rose-coloured glasses. It’s the same metaphor – looking at life more optimistically, seeing things in a brighter, more positive perspective – it can make you ‘think’ the world’s a sunny day. Paul suggests that using a camera to photograph a moment with Kodachrome film will result in a memory that looks much better than it may have been in reality.
But for this blog post, I don’t want to contemplate what Paul meant in his song. This blog post is strictly about the literal words of the song, specifically those “bright colours, greens of summer and a sunny day”.
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I do “love to take a photograph” but this time of year when I look through the lens of my camera – even with rose coloured glasses – my landscape is stark, beige and uninspiring. Autumn in my province of Nova Scotia can be described as the crescendo of technicolour, but in its wake is a landscape that week by week, month by month becomes more dreary, faded and bleak. Sure, there are some beautiful days in the winter with big blue skies, white carpets of snow with the accent of red berries, and evergreens. But overall, our climate is quite temperate with more rain than snow and much more Winter than Spring.
So I lament.
I hit this proverbial wall annually and my yearning for colour and inspiration leads me to find it elsewhere. I schedule travel this month to allow me to revel in the full painter's palette. I am drawn to images in kodachrome, punchy colours, strong contrast, and vibrant tones. I seek them out.
Next week I was due to wander through Scotland. I had planned an extensive itinerary from Glasgow to John O’Groats, the Orkney Islands, the Highlands and the Islands. My camera was poised and ready to be put into overtime. Ready to capture castles with backgrounds of green rolling hills, dots of white sheep, yellow daffodils, and patches of bluebells.
Those plans, like plans everywhere for everyone, are on hold due to the coronavirus pandemic. Instead, I have no choice but to adhere to our local government directives and limit my wandering to my neighbourhood streets. And in my current world of sepia my camera sits idle waiting for signs of Spring – a purple crocus, pink cherry blossoms, red tulips – yearning for Mother Nature to give me back my kodachrome again, oh yeah.