Every day they do everything the same. They torment me at six in the morning. Reminds me that I don’t know how many years ago I was who doesn’t know where. And they leave me with a taste of homesickness.
“Cotidiano”, one of the best compositions by Chico Buarque, fortunately not yet canceled, describes a supposedly passionate routine, but nevertheless a routine. Which is exactly what the algorithms of those who have traveled extensively push us every day.
With a suggestive intro like, “six years ago…”, both my phone’s camera roll and Google Photos, every night, prepared what I call the “torture folder.”
These are collections of photos of places I visited at a time when our ability to travel was not limited by either health or budget issues. But if at first these images aroused sweet memories, the repetition of this programmed nostalgia today also brings me a certain frustration.
The restrictions of the pandemic, we know well and worldwide we feel powerless in the face of this threat of nature. The same goes for our currency humiliation. Sad is not it?
Even optimistic, believing that soon everything will change, I was curious to understand how this torture tool worked and decided to test it. Where it says “search your photos”, I wrote “miss you”.
The only photo that came was a selfie in front of a lambe-lambe in Vila Madalena (SP), where it was precisely written… “saudades”. No record of the places I really wanted to be right now.
I typed “departures” and I only got a print of a boarding pass from Paris to Antananarivo, Madagascar, where I was in May 2016. “Esperança” only brought me a photo of a boat with that name that I took when I returned to Beberibe (CE ), five years ago.
When I searched for “joy”, the result was surprising: a selfie at the Medici fountain, in the Jardin du Luxembourg, Paris; another in Haridwar, a pilgrimage town in India; a hearty laugh at Passarela do Caranguejo, Aracaju; a pose with my two brothers in Namibia; another with Shakira in Salta, Argentina; and one with Anitta at Globo studios.
“Peace” showed me a poster in a house in Imbassaí (BA) and a selfie with a page from this same Folha, with a column I wrote in 2015 about a visit to the Salar de Uyuni, in Bolivia. “Tranquility”, “rest”, “soul” and “passion” did not bring me any results.
Sign that there was something strange with my algorithms.
In the digital column I have in Ilustrada on Sundays, “Divirta-me”, I share cultural products that, well, amuse me every week. And there I always joke that we swim against the tide of algorithms, which invariably push us more of the same.
My “theory” is that we are the ones who can run the algorithms and not they over us. If the secret is to follow and “tag” things that delight us, then we can change the game. And that’s exactly what I started to do with my photos around the world.
Since the beginning of the week I started to write about images, things that really speak to my heart. I invested in the ones I mentioned above, “soul”, “passion”. But I created new categories as well.
“My paradise”. “Eternal return”. “Amazing Nights”. “Where we kissed”. “Fullness”. “Private Infinity”. “Forever”. “Wonderful Life”.
It’s too early to say if anything has changed in the little movies that the algorithms prepare for me. But I can already say that just by doing this exercise of classifying my records not by GPS, but by heart, I have already made peace with my travel memories.
And I’m ready to collect many more.
