An Elegy of a Carwash

Today in the “What the hell is it?” column of my photographic journey, you get a little perspective on what happens when I’m stuck in a carwash.

Post-snowstorm, I generally like to get a carwash. For one, the use of salt on the roads has a detrimental effect on my car’s undercarriage and secondly, it’s relatively cathartic. From my perspective, five minutes of absolute environmental white noise inhibits phone calls and intrusions and allows me to shut out the world. It’s my “sensory deprivation tank,” if you will.

My local carwash has an enclosed, track-driven system that pulls my car along through the various stations. As a kid, I always loved watching my mom’s car get taken through the local car wash, fascinated by the various mechanisms used to clean the car, along with the people who navigated the slippery corridors between. This was all viewed through big, plate-glass windows lining a hallway filled with old arcade games, semi-gloss red-black tiles, and a distinct smell of the cleaning agents from just beyond the wall. It’s a heady mix of memories.

Nowadays, I don’t have the luxury of removing myself from the car. I don’t get out and vacuum (though I should), I don’t use a chamois to wipe down the excess water on the side mirrors and glass like the folks did in times of yore, and I don’t even have to roll my window down to make my carwash selection.

Everything is automated and clinical, removed from that awe-inspiring role played by vintage 80’s and 90’s equipment and moved into a neon-bright assemblage of suds and chaos.

The picture above is one of those moments where the soap from the second station of five comes cascading down in front of the neon-orange colour of whichever manufacturer provided the agent. Its purpose is to subtly suggest that this manufacturer has only the best interests of your vehicle at heart, and while you can’t get out and enjoy it directly, you must trust in the orangeness of the sign. It’s fantastical (and farcical) programmed bullshit, but it’s the experience I get to have.

An elegy on a carwash experience is probably not what you came here for and, in truth, is probably not what I originally intended. I saw this moment amongst the ten or so captures I made and decided that there was a certain je ne sais quoi to it, a hearkening back to the abstract impressionism of 20th-century photography. But wrapped within its abstraction, there are memories as noted, of times past.

I write all of this to remind us, to remind myself of the world we live in. We’ve lived many different stories and experienced many different memories of places, from the mundane to the fantastical. We’ve turned simple joys into clinical moments, art into automation, and languid experiences into impatience. I wish I had my child-like wonder back for these moments, and I scramble, every day, to embrace them.

Don’t give up, dear souls, in reclaiming the past, the experiences that sit warm and cheerful in your mind. I hope you’re able to find them, even within the corridors of modernity, as you go about your days.

May it ever be so.