I’m going to memorise your name, then throw away my head
When I think about it, my memories aren’t as vivid or as clear as I’d like to believe. They’re laid out well enough, in classic photo-album style, each one correct, in its own laminate pocket on the backlit glass surface of my hippocampus. But this civilised arrangement doesn’t bear scrutiny. When I peer closer, and try to bring a particular one into focus - a daytrip, a breakup, a person I knew - it wobbles and warps and dissolves into an abstract smudge of sensations, and the harder I squint my mind’s eye, the more unyielding and mendacious the memory becomes. And early childhood is no different from the recent past in this respect. A yellow toy backhoe from when I was four years old is as precise (or as vague) in my mind, when it comes down to it, as the birth of my daughter. This isn’t to say that I don’t hold the second of these dearer than the first, but that the emotion with which I invest each recollection has no bearing at all, it seems, on the clarity, or even, I suspect, the tenure thereof.
I can’t say that I’m especially bothered about this, although it makes me wish I had taken more photographs instead of telling anyone who would listen that if you can’t remember it, it’s not worth photographing, anyway.
This entry was posted on Monday, June 26th, 2006 at 7:14 PM and filed under New stuff. Trackbacks are closed.
A few photos are good - if there are too many then I’ve found they become all you remember. There is a school of thought that when you recall something, you are only remembering the last time you remembered it, rather than the original event which is why it becomes fuzzier and distorted over time.
Posted on 27-Jun-06 at 12:15 am | PermalinkThat would explain why my parents keep remembering highly idealised versions of events that bear little resemblance to what actually happened.
Posted on 27-Jun-06 at 6:08 am | PermalinkThat’s a fab bit of writing - it’s ace, ace.
Posted on 27-Jun-06 at 7:23 am | PermalinkI met a Finnish guy once who worked for Nokia. He photographed literally everything he came into contact with, and retained all the images on a library of CDs. You’d be in the pub and he’d be flashing his camera around, snapping the locals while they drank. He only got away with it because he was a fucking big bloke with a simpleton’s face.
Posted on 28-Jun-06 at 2:21 pm | PermalinkSnap.
Posted on 03-Jul-06 at 3:46 am | Permalink