That I almost believe that they're real

As a friend once said in less happy times, I have a tendency to sit around listening to the Cure. 

I saw this ad long ago when it came out. This was the olden days -- not only did I have a television, but we were required to sit through the ads if we wanted to watch a show! Those were crazy times.

Anyway, it has stuck in my mind all these years as an example of an unsettling juxtaposition of subject matter and illustration. I wondered how any company could have chosen this song to sell a product. I thought someone at the ad agency must have googled "songs about photography" and, finding this one, happily high-fived his cubicle-mate and set about obtaining the rights without googling the lyrics to find out what the song is about. 

It is a lovely song, perfect in its own way.

I was feeling morose the other day and found myself listening to "Disintegration". It's like a reflex. 

And so I might not automatically have thought of this song when I logged into Facebook the other day and became unsettled at something someone had posted, but I was primed, as the ad men say. 

The details aren't important and aren't the point. The point is that I have changed my mind and now think HP's ad men are geniuses for choosing this song. It's deep, man. The same deep water as -- well, never mind; now I'm being silly.

We have pictures of people in our minds. They move on; they change, but we imagine them frozen in time as we once knew them. We imagine that they are exactly the same. It is comforting in a way: we never have to grapple with the fact that over the intervening years they (and we) have had experiences that had profound effects, some devastating, some deliriously transformative. We stare at those pictures in our memories or on Facebook, and we convince ourselves that they represent reality. 

Now that's a product worth buying.