Although Mekas made a couple of narrative and documentary films early in his career, most of his work consists of what he calls diaries. These are short films of hundreds if not thousands of recorded moments from his life. And to this day, nearly 60 years after his first ones, he still shoots, edits and posts diaries on his website. The culmination of these diaries is a five-hour-long magnum opus, titled, As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Glimpses of Beauty. The film was created by Mekas by hand-splicing and editing film footage and diaries spanning over 50 years.
     While watching As I Was Moving I realised that what Mekas is the real collector of is not photos and magazines and old super-8 film reels; what Mekas is the collector of – an obsessive, and ultimately deeply loving collector of – are the impermanent, fleeting moments of life. He wants to capture them all, as many as he can hold up his camera to. Yet, although there is a distinctly personal and poetic ambience to his film, as you watch it, it slowly becomes yours. Gradually you lose the sense that you are even watching a film, let alone scenes from a person’s life. Instead there is a gauzy hypnotic feeling that begins to overtake you. It’s like watching a dream, a half-life of universes, of what has happened and what is only imagination. Dream after dream after dream of this. And eventually, after a little more time watching, they are maybe not even his dreams anymore, but possibly yours. This is the gift of Jonas Mekas, artist and collector.

Derek Peck is a New York-based writer, photographer, and the editor and creative director of PLANET Magazine