Return of the Midget Stalker

This post will not actually be about the midget stalker, although he did return and this time I didn't have my personal bodyguard/poetic genius friend around to scare him away. Aaron, where are you?

Hickman discussed Benjamin's "On the Concept of History" today. I admit that I only understood every third word. No, actually, I have a decent if simple grasp on Marxism and Hegel's dialectic, so I was feeling pretty good about myself. But the concept of history has always fascinated me. Who makes history? I would argue the writers. Who says what they write is accurate? This becomes a contract between the writer and the reader which is inevitably broken.

This concept of history and historical accuracy and recording has been playing in mind in tangent with the 24 Hours at BYU photo essay. Is that history? It is from our point of view, or at least history from the lens of a camera. There is a website my brother directed me to called the Thought Project. A photographer asked people what they had been thinking about right before he walked up to them, then took their picture. The pictures are simple portraits, but their answers vary in depth and apparent importance and interest. But is that the truest form of history? They must have censored their answers for this random photo-man. And some of them have been translated into English, adding another layer for their stories to filter through. Check it out, though. Just google "Thought Project." It should be the first one to show up.