Questions of Tourist Photography, or I'm Another One of the Camera-Wielding Lampreys

At kecak, I'm taken aback by the cataract of camera flashes that goes off every few seconds.

It's very Kanye...

But what do I know?

The accumulation of each whirring flare make me a little Tourettesy, and I quickly fall prey to a paroxysm of navel-gazing, douchebaggery, preoccupied by the fact that I have to admit that I'm one of these camera-wielding lampreys, an amateur photographer, a professional soul-sucker...

I console myself with the fact that my camera is too antiquated to be as parasitic as the more high-powered, professionally-lensed among us, but it's no excuse. I'm just as consumed by the diabolical desire to document, document, document every meal and every "experience."

What compels so many of us to do this? The relative monotony of our "real" lives?

Quoting Bishop, "Is it lack of imagination that makes us come / to imagined places, not just stay at home?" And then, do we have to take a picture of it for it to be "real"?

Are we so determined by image-making that we have to exist in some media--any media--to have existed? What does it mean that I distrust memory so much that I refuse to let more than 24 hours slip by without jotting down my itinerary for each day?

It's all very tedious, and my neuroticism and morbidity immediately lead me to the point of no return, wherein I brood about who will even care to scroll through these hundreds of digital photos...once I'm dead.

I shake myself out of it. I'm getting better at that now.