Kodachrome Minds: Seeing Through the Filters of Memory and Meaning

Hey, how was your week?

Mine ended with a song and a flash of memory. Kodachrome came on the radio just as I finished my first Medium article on understanding. Paul Simon’s line hit me hard:

“When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school, it’s a wonder I can think at all.”

I tried telling Siri to remind me about it. She failed miserably. So I did the old-fashioned thing: I pulled over, grabbed a pen, and wrote a note to myself.

It made me pause and think about what I’d been learning—and what I hadn’t. About the filters we carry with us, the ways we’ve been taught to see the world, and how often we mistake polished pictures for truth.

That moment wasn’t just about a song or a note. It felt like the start of my next chapter: learning to see clearly, even when everything around me is still filtered.

When the World First Turned to Color

I was a child of the fifties and sixties, that strange in-between era when the world still looked black and white but was just beginning to dream in color.

My first TV was a 13-inch black-and-white set with rabbit ears wrapped in tin foil to improve the picture quality. Back in 1955 Brooklyn, our apartment was cooled the old-fashioned way, with an exhaust fan in the back window and the front door left open, hoping for a breeze.

That lyric from Paul Simon always made me smile when I was younger, just a clever jab at teachers and report cards. But as the years went on, it felt less like a joke and more like an indictment. He wasn’t just talking about school. He was talking about the way we were taught to see.

Back then, understanding wasn’t the goal; conformity was. You memorized, recited, repeated. The kids who followed directions were “good students.” The ones who questioned too much were “troublemakers.” I still remember the dread of flashcards. It was one of the few times I saw my father lose his temper because I couldn’t concentrate on them. 

It’s a wonder I can think at all.

The Kodachrome Generation

When Kodak introduced Kodachrome film, it changed everything. Suddenly, the world had color, rich, vivid, full of life. Vacations looked sunnier. Families looked happier. The American Dream gleamed a little brighter.

But here’s the thing about Kodachrome: it made everything look better than it was. Every photo was warmer, every sky a little bluer. It didn’t just capture the moment—it improved it.

That’s how the fifties and early sixties felt in hindsight, saturated with optimism even as reality cracked underneath. Civil rights marches filled the streets down South, but you wouldn’t know it from the pages of Life magazine. Vietnam was escalating, yet our textbooks still said America always wore the white hat. The music was also changing. It started having a message.

Even our symbols reflected that filtered vision. In 1954, “under God” was added to the Pledge of Allegiance, and soon after, “In God We Trust” became our national motto. It wasn’t just about faith; it was about defining who we were against who we feared becoming. Our country’s self-image was being developed in Kodachrome, too.

Sometimes I imagine what it would be like to be an entrepreneur back then. America was expanding, and the need for goods and services made millionaires out of ordinary people willing to work hard and take a chance. Open one dry-cleaning shop and before long, the demand was so great you could open another one a mile away.

Kodachrome wasn’t just a film. It was a filter for an entire generation’s memory.

What We Were Taught to See

In those classrooms, we learned to label and define, not to understand. Facts were sacred, and context was optional. We could recite the Pledge of Allegiance and the periodic table, but no one asked why we needed to and how it would help us. We just obeyed.

It’s almost comical now that we practiced protecting ourselves from nuclear attacks by ducking under our desks. Someone must have known that was absurd, but the message didn’t filter down.

The irony is, the more information we absorbed, the less we understood. We knew names, dates, and formulas, but not the meaning. We could color inside the lines, but we couldn’t ask why the lines were there in the first place. That’s what Simon meant, I think. The wonder isn’t that we can think, it’s that we ever learned to.

The Filters We Keep

Years later, I realized how deeply that conditioning had run. We kept the filters, we just upgraded them. Memory has its own Kodachrome effect, turning our past into a highlight reel and editing out the awkward truths and pain. Every generation does it. Ask anyone about “the good old days,” and they’ll show you smiling faces while forgetting what was happening outside the frame.

Our memories lie with charm. They give comfort, not clarity. But understanding demands the opposite. It asks us to see the unflattering angles, the blur, the overexposed moments. If you can’t face the whole picture, you’re not really seeing it.

From Film to Feeds

We no longer shoot on Kodachrome. Now we filter our lives through algorithms. Film once boosted color and hid flaws. Our digital world boosts outrage and hides nuance. Social feeds don’t show us the truth; they show reflections, bright and addictive. It’s nostalgia in real time.

We used to take family portraits to prove we belonged. Now we take selfies to prove we exist. We’re still editing our understanding, only faster. Every scroll, every like, every click is another exposure, light, shadow, emotion, processed through someone else’s lens.

And just like those teachers who once told us what to think, today’s platforms tell us what to care about. That’s not progress, it’s a remix.

Understanding in an Age of Illusion

What we call knowledge today looks a lot like what we called it in the 1960s: facts without depth, stories without scrutiny, opinions dressed up as truth. The tools evolved, but the instinct didn’t. We still want the picture to look good, even when it’s false.

But understanding doesn’t live in the highlight reel. It lives in the quiet, messy places, the contradictions, the questions, the moments that don’t fit neatly into a caption. It lives in the pause before reacting, in the humility to admit, “I don’t know what I don’t know.”

That’s not glamorous, and it doesn’t go viral. But it’s the only way past illusion.

The Lens of Experience

Maybe the real gift of growing up in that era is perspective. I’ve watched the world move from radio to TV, from film to digital, from libraries to AI. Every innovation promised clarity, and everyone delivered more noise.

But once in a while, I’ll find an old photograph, slightly faded, with colors bleeding at the edges, and it feels truer than any 4K image on my phone. Because it wasn’t perfect. It was real.

Understanding isn’t about focus; it’s about honesty. The courage to look past the filters and see what’s actually there.

What Paul Simon Knew

If Paul Simon wrote Kodachrome today, he might say, “It’s a wonder I can think at all, and an even greater wonder that I still try.”

We live in a world that prizes immediacy over insight, filters over depth. Yet some of us still try to understand, and that gives me hope.

Because understanding isn’t nostalgia. It’s awareness. It’s the moment we stop editing and start noticing. We spent decades polishing the picture. Maybe it’s time we put the camera down and actually see each other again. That’s what I’m after now, not the perfect picture, but the honest one.

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