Sticks in your head
December 15th 2006 01:34
Archangel Adriana Lima
But is what's memorable meaningful?
"Achy breaky heart" sticks in the head, like a knife.
***
So on the one hand there's qualities like vividness and emotion that make things memorable (and annoyance might count as an emotion).
Memory doesn't have to correlate with meaning.
On the other hand, perhaps most of what counts as interesting does stick in the head. Your neural net has filtered out the dross, and has made a decision on what to keep.
The most interesting might be what's mixed with mystery (like the sublime, like kami) -- things that never yield up their secrets on first glance. For its these experiences that make the most claim on you, that most force you into life.
The scent of something new.
You feel there's something to them, but can't put your finger on what. And that's why they nag at you, obsess you, that's why you return to them. Situations, concepts, objects that are just past your power to grasp. There's more to extract -- more feeling, information... Films that need rewatching.
And if it's not itchy, why scratch.
The ideal art is inexhaustible.
***
I don't want to say, though, that memorability is a prerequisite for meaning. It's possible that something can shake you to the core, but be left behind with the moment.
"Forgettable" is sometimes used as an insult. But I think it's based on a false idea -- that the only things that matter are those that linger and have an effect.
Stoicism concludes that, given the vastness of time and space, nothing in your life can matter.
***
Perhaps it's only the eye of memory that sees. Consider these comments from Roland Barthes in Camera Lucida (1982):
Roland Barthes
"Not only is the Photograph never, in essence, a memory... but it actually blocks memory, quickly becomes a counter-memory. One day, some friends were talking about their childhood memories; they had any number; but I, who had just been looking at my old photographs, had none left... The Photograph is violent: not because it shows violent things, but because on each occasion it fills the sight by force".
***
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Adriana Lima image was from this site.
Roland Barthes image was from the Wikipedia article.
| 128 |
| Vote |
Add To: 
subscribe to this blog
Comment by Damo
I must say that I rewatch some films to relive the entire atmosphere. Out side of it thge memory is ver bland.
Comment by Australis
The Scriptwriting Blog
Personal Blog - A Writer's Life
I look at photos of the holiday my wife and I conceived our first child (ooh, let's get deeply personal here), and what a really wonderful time we had. On holiday, I mean
I watched a programme recently about Roswell, and the point was made that memory is nowhere near as accurate as we'd like to think. They proved this by walking a nature group (wearing minicams) past a simulated ''crash site' (is it Air Force, is it alien?), and then a month later interviewing them about what they had seen. In that time imagination had played up the images, so that a woman 'saw' two guards wearing masks, when in fact her minicam showed that not only was their only one unmasked guard, but she had only seen a very brief glimpse of him.
As I get older, the events aren't so clear to recall, but the photos bring them back, in sharp focus. It's good to have them. And I'd like to add, it's sense of smell that is so incredibly evocative, one whiff of home made bread or a perfume, and suddenly you are there!
Comment by Cibbuano
Hunt Famous
Orble Post of the Day
Fat Cult
Techbreak
Sorry, you'll have to forgive my distraction...
Comment by MelissaA
Fun Facts
Comment by Adrian
Philosophy Blog
Cibby -- she's supposed to help you remember, dammit!...
Damo -- you're perfectly right. The taste of films, the emotions they excite, are the main reason people rewatch them... In my post, I talked about rewatching films that nag at you, but, really, this is only one reason, among many, for rewatching...
Australis -- thanks for the comment! And your smell of bread simile was particularly evocative.
I reckon photographs are flash cards for everyone. I'd agree with that much. But I'd also claim that they're in a sense conducive to forgetting. After all, one writes down a shopping list to save oneself the trouble of remembering it. And the invention of writing seems to have shortened people's memories in general.
So I think there's something to the idea that you photograph a scene to save yourself the trouble of studying the image, committing it to memory, carrying it around with you...
I don't know if this is what Kafka is getting at, but I'd want to say that his statement is paradoxical enough that he knows it can't be straightforwardly true.
Regarding the fallibility of memory, you're absolutely correct. The point has been made many times in the context of the reliability of witness testimony at court. For instance, witnesses will "remember" different things depending on what nouns the cross-examining lawyer uses (I seem to recall that "crash" makes them think of broken glass).
So your reminder is apt. But I'd also claim that Barthes is being paradoxical enough that he knows his words aren't straightforwardly true...
When he says that the eye of memory sees more clearly than the photograph, presumably he's talking about something like meaning, rather than representation and whether there was one alien guard or two. And when he speaks of the photograph being a counter-memory, he's talking, among other things, about the way you pick up new details, and can change your impression of an event, can change or actually do change what meaning the photograph stands for, each time you revisit the physical image.
Comment by Adrian
Philosophy Blog
"If you're taking notes, that means you're not listening."
Comment by Hellvis
Earache Hotel
It's interesting what you say about writing, in that it removes the need to remember. Often writing, whether it is fiction or non-fiction, is a way of purging the past, getting it down on paper so that the mind no longer dwells on it. I think that's as true of the shopping list as it is of a memoir or a horror novel.
I think the photo is similar in a way too, but it is paradoxical. Perhaps the very fact that the photograph becomes a tool to help us remember is what also lessens our capacity to remember without it.