Preserving The Past By Conjuring Nostalgia

Conserve the Sound is an online archive of sounds taken from yesteryear. Once familiar, they are no longer part of our daily lives, but this platform will take you back in time, awakening forgotten memories.

- Lloyd Gedye

Next year will be my 15th year of living in Johannesburg. When I arrived fresh-faced in 2004, I was completely intimidated by this mega-city. I had accepted a job offer and relocated from Durban to Johannesburg in less than a week, my car packed with my meagre possessions.

Johannesburg was daunting. Not only was it massive, but traffic was a nightmare.

My best friend in those early days was a Johannesburg street map book, without which I may never have found my way anywhere. I became an expert at sliding across multiple pages, plotting my course from point A to point B, learning to navigate while on the road, without killing myself or others.

It was through that map book that I learnt to traverse the city. I learnt about its ebbs and flows, its bottlenecks and lesser-known backroads.

Many of the lessons I learnt during that time are still deeply engrained in my mind, there every time I get behind the wheel of my car.

I still have the street map book, but I haven’t used it in years. Google Maps now shows me multiple routes to get from point A to point B at the click of a button. The well-thumbed map is a thing of the past. Technology has simply made it irrelevant.