The Fight Against Forgetting (Introducing: Wax Walls)
Your memories are evaporating, will you let it continue undisturbed?
Forgetting is the new normal.
You no longer live in the present, or even the past. You bounce along in limbo chasing the next hit, as your true potential floats down the river. A dazzling fish you can touch but never hold on to.
Over time you're left grasping for the life you always wanted, but will never have, exchanging your most valuable asset to gamble on it every time.
All of your memories evaporating in the process.
Saving without engaging. Liking without watching. Consuming without integrating. Another bite of this apple, and a third serving of dessert please.
Infinity slop, seen once and forgotten.
"Life" is now an inconvenient lunch break between more time with your void machine.
What a beautiful existence we've manifested for ourselves.
And whilst you can sit and point the finger, what will you actually crave on your deathbed? When your final moments slowly tick away, what will you want?
Your family, your friends, and your memories.
Your stories, experiences, the love, the loss, the growth, the adventure, the rainy days, and your favourite 2am fireside jokes. Nothing else will matter.
You've got one shot at this so, why do you just let your life drift by and not capture more of it?
I've been doing this compulsively for years.
Constantly taking photos, collecting moments, and capturing emotions - with one goal in mind. I want to look back at my photos and feel the scene so intensely I'm transported back to the millisecond it was taken.
As if it were the present moment.
I've pursued this feeling for as long as I can remember.
My eye is intuitively trained on composition, stories, and colour. It is second nature to me.
In hindsight this behaviour was clearly in my genetics. I grew up surrounded by my grandfather's photo albums, and my uncle's professional photography gear. Cameras were a family ritual.
Yet, until last year, I had no idea why I took photos. I have boxes of 35mm film negatives, with over 80 rolls shot in 2025 alone but, no idea why I felt compelled to do it.
At first, I thought it was a response to my lack of memory-making capacity.
Many of my memories are lost from traumatic experiences, derealisation, and dissociation.
My childhood is full of blurry scenes, some of which aren't even mine - they're just stories told to me by friends and family. Clearly, my body was in survival mode for a long time.
Compulsively taking photographs to prove to myself I was real.
For a while holding everything I loved with a vice-like grip worked well.
Until the end of 2024 when my life fell apart.
Everything I had held onto so tightly, slipped through my fingers.
I spent the next 12 months unwinding this pain. The only thing I could do was take photos and move. Everything else hurt too much. Grabbing a camera became my only outlet, my coping mechanism, and my processing vehicle.
Blasting through rolls of film like my life depended on it. Saying "yes" to any adventure I could get my hands on. A tiny injection of dopamine with every press of the shutter.
During that year, as the pain dissolved, I started noticing what I was actually doing. My eyes and mind focused on what felt intuitive.
What did I take photos of? How did I speak and write? Which topics was I diving deep on? Where did my curiosity want to take me? Every group dinner, plane ride, couch surfing night, and esoteric rabbit hole. Exploiting my natural pattern recognition skills to piece together the common thread.
Notice. Capture. Translate.
It was everywhere. The same pattern over and over.
It became clear I was a professional notice-er of sorts. A camera being my weapon of choice.
Capturing the human condition, a life well-lived, from the day-to-day to the once-in-a-lifetime. I was consumed by this practice.
Because ultimately, I want to have photos to share with my future wife and children. To know I found community and lived with wonder and curiosity. Loving openly and recklessly even if it broke my heart.
I want you to be able to step into the frame of every single photo I share and immediately connect with it.
You're in the moment, not simply a bystander.
This is the edge where Wax Walls was born and my underlying mission Fight Against Forgetting realised.
Each Wax Walls newsletter will include my photography tied together with stories from my adventures both international and everyday. Personal experiences, observations, and creative perspective.
Serving both as my personal archive and a call to arms to inspire you to take back control of your memories.
Because at the end of the day, it's one of the few things you can truly own forever.
It's time to forge unforgettable memories and protect them at all costs.
Connor x
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