Memory is the Lost Cause

1.

My memory’s a blur. Well. Most of our memories are blurs — individuals’ and nations’; but I’m the only one admitting it. Studies continually show that court testimonies are regularly unreliable (personal memory); memorials fail to recall events the way they happened (public memory). My sister still says the Nintendo is “hers;” folks still seem to think a statue constitutes “history.”

My memory’s an actual blur, though. So much of what I remember has smear-marks in it. It’s a cool-weird effect: an Instagram filter no one would use.

I’ve looked for answers to why this is. In astrology: Gemini memories are so unreliable because we’re constantly shifting ideas, identities and standards. [Eyeroll] In personality tests: an online forum of ENFPs maintain that, because we’re forever “in the moment,” we struggle to retain anything.

Just today I had to remember — again (maybe for the third time?) — that I threw away a pair of flip-flops because…well…maybe they were too dirty to clean; maybe they were broken; maybe I cleaned them and they fell apart? Who knows?

My husband. He knows. And he, for the third or twelfth time, reminded me that the flip flops I’ve been wearing are his.

I should be troubled by all of this, right? The idea of a near-total lack of detail-recall sounds terrifying to people when I talk about it. But I’ve become accustomed to it. You might even say I’ve incorporated it into my identity.

Years ago, I started hedging statements about the past: “I doubt I’m remembering this right, but…” and “I can’t remember the details, but I have this feeling that…”

I added compliments to those who could fill in the details: “You always are so good at that!” and “Your mind’s like a bear trap.”

Such passivity and bolstered approval is meant to generate a forcefield around me. Memory is, after all, a core of community identity. It’s key to effective listening. It’s what friends like to talk about — they like to reminisce. It makes people feel whole.

I remember very little. The past comes to me in quasi-snapshots. But instead of a photo captured from my perspective (ya know, like an experienced “memory”), I usually can see myself in the image.

Take this one time — in high school — when I sang a solo at a choir concert. I remember nothing POV. I see a sequence of still shots…of me. It’s as if I’d jumped into the audience, watched myself perform, captured the image on a camcorder (come on: it was the 90s) and projected it back to myself twenty years later.

What’s funny is: no pictures survive of that concert. There was no camcorder trained on me. There is nothing left but a cassette recording. What I “remember” about where I stood and “danced” comes to me through filmic impressions. It’s as if a crew set up cameras around the venue, deep in the audience, and snapped a bunch of pictures.

I can change the angle. I see myself from the other side of the stage. From above. From below. But there’s no actual memory of me singing. Of what it felt like to stare at an audience, at a microphone, at my fellow choir members.

I’ve invented the angles, camera movement and composition. All…for…whom? Myself? I’ve certainly never talked about that concert with anyone for twenty years. It’s as if, over time, I’ve decided to play the event back to myself like a movie.

A film that has only three shots — a masterwork of efficient editing. Then: fin.

2.

I can feel the wind blowing. I can sense greatness. I am saying to myself: “this is worth remembering. Concentrate. Keep this.” But I have no indexical relationship to the moment. It was a moment I cherished. One in which I had a deep and loving connection to. But the context is gone.

There remains a wonderful clarity, however: I know that I participated in a thing. It was magnificent. I should be proud of it.

I should be indebted to the world — to my life — for letting such a thing occur.

But. What the hell was that thing? Who knows?

This might worry the “bear traps” out there. But, to me, there’s comfort in such vagueness. When I “remember,” I’m not thinking about the specific things that have made me…me. I’m not reminiscing in the ways others do.

Without a referent, is anything signified?

I guess I just know I’ve lived a good life — even with scant visual or auditory evidence to prove it.

3.

I meet up with an old friend. I see her and feel a great deal of love, respect — even intimidation. I’ve often heard people begrudge Reunions. Organized cominglings of people long-distant and deprived of context.

Luckily, I have few snapshots of what we did together: conversations and physical closeness are mostly shaded by time. The drama (and clear empirical data making clear sense of why we’re friends/enemies) is lost on me.

But this is not an impediment. Relationships and their meanings are not lost because affective reserves inspirit the warmth of your presence. It is trust. It is the fruit of what we planted so long ago.

Though I don’t have a visual, I know we’ve hugged a great many times. I’m sure — though I can’t picture it — that I kissed you on the cheek one New Year’s Eve. The facts of us are written in more powerful schemes than image, text and sound.

So I smile when I see you. I stand as you approach. And I embrace you for what I know we still have. A friendship.

4.

Memory is fickle anyway. Who needs it? Maybe this ambivalence explains why I dedicated my dissertation to it. The thing that seems to be so important to everyone is so difficult for me. So I should study it, right?

Is this any different than why people are drawn to any number of subjects — they want to fix themselves as much as something else? Sociology, Psychology, Engineering…people want to fix things — people, buildings, societies — and yet they’re often peering at, drilling in, remaking the infrastructure of their own lives in the process.

I can be a memory-hoarder. “Keep track of everything, Ryan: papers, pictures, correspondences, everything. If it’s gone, it’s lost forever.” I won’t remember it I’m not triggered.

I can be a memory-nihilist. “It’s all fleeting!” We have lifespans and memory-spans. Beyond our lives we have (maybe) a generation of people who remember us. The Etruscan’s had a word for this phenomenon: “saeculum.” Only the most polarizing, villainous or heroic amongst us “live” beyond it. This can induce fear. Our desire (need?) for legacy seems to stem from our fear of mortality. The end of the saeculum is total death.

That’s dark, dude.

Or it’s freeing. Why force my memories onto future generations? Am I so vainglorious that I should demand the future to include me? My storage unit — no matter how sentimental, romantic or sincere — is going to be someone else’s problem one day. Can I honestly say that cassette recording of my senior choir concert deserves to be remembered?

Both memory hoarding (“memory-ism”) and memory nihilism scare people. Yet they neatly sum up our current public debate over memory. We are memory-hoarders: Archive it! Save everything!

Our attics and basements are packed. Each iPhone resembles an infinite scroll.

Maybe we should be memory-nihilists? The more we keep, the less we allow others to create new meaning from their own lives. Context is important, don’t get me wrong. But as long as that street is called “Pinkney” it will never be named after someone you know — or love.

The names forever stamped on our maps. The people forever captured in concrete, bronze and marble. The ideas forever sacralized on parchment. They are as much educating us as burdening us.

So. What if we, just, burned everything?

I’m kidding, of course. Ha…haha…ha?

“Forgetting” is often used synonymously with death and devilry. But, on the other hand, hoarding is a television show filled with unspeakable horrors.

Memory fortifies a Lost Cause; yet, perhaps memory is the lost cause.

5.

Memory is different than history. Memory is personal and public — simultaneously comforting while simultaneously instantiating more “-isms.”

Can we agree on at least one thing: memory is both a blessing and a burden?

That was a trick.

I can’t agree.

Because, for me, it’s something else. It’s what other people do.

I’m not memoryless, but I do observe things a bit differently. With only snapshots (designed with little verisimilitude), I am constantly thinking about what it makes us feel, what it makes us do…

And…in the end: memory is the means. It’s not the end.