There is a particular kind of innocence that does not disappear when it is seen. It remains, shimmering, like the afternoon light on old linen — there whether you look at it or not.
I have been thinking about this since last autumn, when I found a photograph of myself at seven, standing in a garden I no longer remember. My expression is not childlike in the way we usually mean. It is simply present. There is nothing being held back.
The Trouble with Remembering
Memory is not a record. It is a collage — a word I use with affection. We cut from what we have felt and paste it onto what we think we saw. The photograph is the only honest thing; the story I tell about it is already mine, already shaped.
Perhaps this is why vintage objects carry such weight. The coat from 1954 has no memory of its own. It simply is — and in being, it allows us to bring ours to it without correction.
Soon I’ll find the right words, they’ll be very simple.
The line is from Lykke Li, and I have never fully explained to anyone why I return to it so often. It is enough that I do. Simple words are the honest ones. The architecture of innocence is built from them.
