What I Found in My Grandfather's Amazing Journals

What our loved ones leave behind often opens a window into their lives we have not seen or noticed.

Thier journals, writings, sketch books and art work reveal their unique perspectrive on ther world, thier lives in it and how they viewed us and everyone else.

This video helps us understand that our outlook is but one of many.

Video from The Atlantic

What I Found in My Grandfather's Amazing Journals

"When Byron Levy died at 94, he left behind thousands of illustrations, paintings, and personal reflections, connecting three generations and lending him creative immortality." from video introduction

"When Byron Levy died at 94, he left something of himself behind. Years later, his grandson Colin Levy would discover it—and, in turn, get to meet his grandfather again.

The younger Levy came to call it the “memory book.” But it wasn’t just one journal—it was hundreds, filled to the brim with thousands of illustrations, anecdotes, inventions, thoughts, dreams, adventures, misadventures, and historical events filtered through the lens of one family. It was an impressionistic retrospective that began in early childhood and spanned three generations. It was a lifetime of memories, and the memory of an inner life.

In his short documentary My Grandfather’s Memory Book, Levy takes us on an animated journey through notable chapters of Byron’s journals. Together with Byron’s drawings, the film’s hand-drawn visuals paint the story of a wildly creative man whose obsessive chronicling of his own life lent him a kind of immortality.

"I think for him, creativity was a way of thinking and being and navigating life,” Levy told me. “The impression my grandfather gave me about this stuff is that creativity can give one a sense of agency in life. If you feed your creativity with exploration and expression and vulnerability, it feeds you back. It's nourishing and valuable to spend time making stuff.”

Levy treasures his grandfather’s sketchbooks not only for the information they have provided about Byron’s life, but also for their unique subjectivity. “They're filled almost exclusively with markings he made with his own hand, based on things he saw with his own eyes and thoughts he was experiencing in his head,” Levy said. “It's so wonderful to get to experience moments from his life through his point of view. You can really sense him observing, feeling, and thinking as you flip through the pages.”

When he initially set out to make the film, Levy was concerned that his grandfather’s life wouldn’t be of interest to anyone outside the Levy family. He’s glad to admit that he was wrong." from the article: What I Found in My Grandfather’s Hundreds of Journals

#extraordinarygod