“I’ve lost all my memories” she says on the phone to me while I am lost in deep nostalgia looking at a bunch of stolen phones laying on the floor at a market in the north of France.
“-How so?
They stole my phone at a party, or maybe I lost it, I don’t know but everything is gone. Can you send me memories?”
This is a weird thing to ask I tell her.
I hang up because I really want to buy a stolen broken phone at that moment.
The guy tells me that I should not worry, “I erased everything”.
And while I give him a bill of 5 to close the transaction and look at the fractured Samsung in my hand I feel a bit heartbroken.
The phones I bought there never turned on, and I don’t think I would have know what to do if they did anyway.
Memories are one thing, but how did I became so greedy about them? Why do I need more images? Do these memories need to be materialised? Do I really need this screenshot of a random guy on hinge and why does my hair look so good in that selfie and so bad in the other one? Why is Stefano’s ID picture even in my gallery?
Why does this clutter matter so much? Maybe if I trap them and transform them they will regain meaning? Is repetition of production a way of freeing myself from being consumed by my phone?
“I can’t choose memories for you”