talk about disappearing

I was invited to talk at IATE, an arts therapy organisation I gave a talk called Personal Pain and Process – Transforming Life through Theatre Works yesterday. 

The event organiser asked if I would like to show a video of my work. I have been very busy teaching and writing a new show and it was just the day before that I got into the cupboard and pulled out a copy of my 1988 piece Wendy Darling. The last time I'd gone to the bother of swapping over the plugs round the back of my TV to watch it, it was sometime ago.
back then the image had the colour and textures of the original show - cool blues and rosy amber tones....I pushed the boxy old VHS into the machine and horror, now there is just a moving image in grainy dark grey tones. I was so pleased I had done it.
It's hideously expensive to transfer - most places charge £25 for up to 2 hours.
I have never really enjoyed watching myself back on tape and I started this blog with the theme of disappearance, but I was in a more resigned place then, than where I am now. 
This blog began as an impulse to leave some kind of mark  - and not so much in my own name, but in a tiny stupid way, in order to counteract the under-represented achievements of women in general over the centuries.

A colleague told me that you can now buy VHS to DVD machines relatively cheaply.

I was teaching the other day and, once again my students have searched for me online and found on youtube not my groundbreaking, genre blasting physical theatre work but something someone I don't even know has posted up (a song that was produced in a way that nullifies the intention I had when writing its lyrics - something I was too young, stupid and too unassertive at the time to avoid). 

Hm so the thought now flashes up - am I now intent on posting up the transferred work (the stuff that isn't completely degraded to shadowy invisibility already). My skin shivers. Staying hidden seems preferable still...but the idea of it disappearing altogether is kinda chilling....
if only VHS technology had been designed to last.