“There is no teaching, but only recollection” – Socrates
Last year I saw a stand-up comedian who, after riffing for 10 minutes on his recent travels across the United States, concluded his set (which was admittedly quite low on laughs) by idiomatically declaring to the half-cut Friday night audience that “when you experience different cultures, it enriches the soul.” How odd a thing it is that you can have the most horizon broadening of experiences while travelling, but sometimes, for whatever reason, it’s actually the most trivial and kinda goofy details that linger in your memory long after you return home. Perhaps I should explain.
I travelled to New York a few years ago and was lucky enough to spend time in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens. New York is an intoxicating place and I am in complete agreement with Christopher Hitchens when he wrote that “time spent asleep in New York was somehow wasted.” I saw live jazz at the Lincoln center, indulged my greatest flaneuristic predilections with an elongated stroll from the Upper East Side via Central Park to the Lower West Side of Manhattan, hung out with some Williamsburg hipsters (on account of whose generosity, and most gratefully, I experienced my first taste of authentic American cornbread and collard greens), ate in the famous Spotted Pig restaurant and drank a beer in the oldest Irish tavern in NYC (McSorley’s Old Ale House – a bar with former patrons including Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant and Teddy Roosevelt).
Despite all these interesting experiences, the first thing I remember when I think of New York is seeing an Arab hat salesman vomiting into a public bin on Bleecker Street (the man was Arab, not the hats). I’m not entirely sure why, but every time I think about that guy throwing up, it makes me laugh, but I’m just surprised that such an odd and unforeseen little incident would go on to become the cognitive thumbnail my brain uses as a shorthand representation of that trip.
And it’s not like these weird memories are something that can be managed or controlled, or even that they are happening on a conscious level. I have forgotten warehouses of knowledge that I used to hold dear, and yet, vast swathes of the trivial and inconsequential remain with me still.
In an interview filmed for BBC television in 1962, Vladimir Nabokov remarked that “the more you love a memory the stronger and stranger it becomes,” and though the eloquence of both Nabokov’s speech and his prose are not to be contested, I would argue that a memory by no means needs to be loved to become strange. All memories become warped and twisted by the shifting light of time. We forget and misremember, constantly. My own mother, as an example, no matter how many times I tell her that I loathe the stuff, will absolutely always make a lasagne for when I visit and defiantly argue that I had always said I loved the dish. She is, of course, quite wrong.
Memory, much like character, is by its very nature an incredibly flawed system, and we are probably all the better for it. The alternative puts me in mind of Ireneo Funes, the eponymous character in Jorge Borges’ fantasy short story Funes the Memorious. After he has the unfortunate luck of being thrown from a horse, Funes is blessed – or perhaps condemned – to spend the rest of his life remembering absolutely everything that he experiences to the minutest detail, including “every crevice and every moulding of the various houses which [surround] him.” However, as Borges – the story’s narrator – notes, Funes, despite his incredible powers of recollection, was “not very capable of thought. To think is to forget differences, generalize, make abstractions.” Memory is not everything, then, and the Borges makes it his business to point out that “in the teeming world of Funes, there were only details, almost immediate in their presence.” Borges is touching on an argument that has been quietly ticking over in philosophical thought for millennia. Socrates had plenty to say on the nature of memory, as did Descartes and Hegel. More recently, the notable French philosopher, Henri Bergson, for example, suggested that in some way everything that has happened to us is remembered, but as a rule only what is useful comes into consciousness. Failures in memory, Bergson contends, are not so much failures of the mental part of memory, but of the more physiological mechanisms used in bringing memory to action. Such philosophical waxing lyrical is all well and good, but does little to explain why I keep thinking about Belgian water pressure.
Memory doesn’t come in the same sequential linear form as first hand experience, it’s more like a collection of fragments, puzzle pieces with fuzzy edges that only sort of connect, and as I’m getting older trying to remember the particular narrative sequence of certain events is kind of like trying to construct a story after only reading every second page of a novel.
I’m yet to meet the person whose mem
ory is without fault and would be highly distrustful of the individual who claimed such an endowment. It seems that we have no other immediate alternative than to make-do with the mess of a filing cabinet we keep in our heads. The battle, therefore, is not necessarily to try and remember everything that we experience but to endeavor to articulate what we can recall in an interesting way. In my own case, I believe that is a foundational requirement that an adult human be able to recite at least one full poem off by heart, one absolutely filthy limerick, one song, one joke and one entirely-humiliating story. It’s not much, but if all else I have to fall back on in a social situation is a story about a man vomiting into a trash-can then I could be doing a lot worse.
There’s a terrific book on memory by Alison Winter that I think would interest you. You can read Jenny Diski’s review of it on the London Review of Books website
Vol. 34 No. 3 · 9 February 2012
A beautiful post about the power of memory, and you quoted three of my favorite people, Socrates, Christopher Hitchens and Vladimir Nabokov! I can only agree about Manhattan. McSorley’s is an experience every visitor should taste!
Great post. As an adjunct to your comment …
“I’m yet to meet the person whose memory is without fault and would be highly distrustful of the individual who claimed such an endowment.”
… you might be interested in this podcast at Radiolab (www.radiolab.org/story/91570-eternal-sunshine-of-the-spotless-rat). Very intriguing stuff. It appears that we don’t hold memories like a filing system, taking them out and putting them back again neatly untouched. Instead we add something to them every single time, which means that what we think of as being an original memory… isn’t.
It’s quite a fascinating subject; the human brain. I don’t think we’ll ever quite work it all out!
Great post! I find it a bit disconcerting that, according to a friend studying cognitive science, every time you think about a memory you subconsciously or unconsciously change some small detail of that memory, you are never remembering the original.
Can’t agree on this line of reasoning. Perhaps we do romance our memories a little but I rather think the basic information never changes. I, for example, I can remember in great detail certain instances from my past even to when I was a small infant. These details remain the same each time I make the recollection according to those I tell. In fact I know I don’t change the basic facts.
Nice post nevertheless.
Shirley Anne
No, I agree that the facts themselves don’t change in this instance. It’s the tiny, sometimes inconsequential details, that do. Your brain doesn’t drastically alter your memories but you never remember something exactly the same way you did before.
Perhaps it does for some
Shirley Anne
I agree, Shirley. I remember things from the past that are verified by much older siblings, and they are amazed I can remember the details since I was so young. So unless we are all changing our memories in the exact same way… ❓
I so enjoyed this post. You have a wonderful way of weaving concrete experiences into a reflective tapestry. Your discussion of selective memory underscores the truth, for me, that I am not so much the product of my past, as its creator. Alan Watts once observed that it is not the wake that creates the ship, but the other way around. Thank you for a great start to the week.
The meaning of being born with a blank slate is to have fun relearning universal wisdom and knowledge.
Fine post but as an add-on to Socrates: I can recall a lot of teaching.
Nice read. From what I have read and gleaned from articles on the subject of memory and remembering/recalling things, one will usually have a vivid recall of images or incidents that have had some kind of associations linked to them. Something that was quite unusual (like the strong water spray of the shower) or something that provoked a strong negative feeling, like disgust or funny (like a man puking apart from seeming disgusting may provide a strangely comical image as well). Any strong emotion evoked will stay for a longer duration in ones memory. That is not to say that other experiences are forgotten rather they stay under wraps till the time they are summoned up as and when required.
A vomiting-is-funny memory for me is something I read about President Harry S. Truman in the memoir of a newspaper reporter. It evokes an era we’ll never see again, now that presidential security officers have taken Pres. Obama’s Blackberry from him,
Truman liked to take late-evening strolls near the White House, unaccompanied by security officers. Reporters would usually join him in these walks for chats. Such a group came upon a man whose stomach was revolting against the load of alcohol he had taken on, desperate for a place to disgorge it. His buddies were helping him vomit into a mailbox, the larger style for packages.
Truman was giving himself over to a laughter treat as they watched.
Why does this memory of a sight seen only through the printed page stick in my mind? I think it’s a borrowed nostalgia with a wistful flavor. Laughter signals permission to relax from danger alert. We need it the way we need music.
Ha ha, that’s a great comment.
{{pouting, shuffling feet}} Do I HAFTA visit New York? I’ve kind of vowed never to go there. I don’t like… crowds.
Whining aside, a good post about traveling and memory. I’ve visited England twice and recall a lot about both experiences, mostly about the food, because food is very important to me.
Wonderful post! I love stumbling across a physical reminder of an experience that I had completely forgotten up to that point. The brain and human consciousness is endlessly fascinating.
Great post! I’ve learned to not trust my own memory too much over the course of my life so far, and isn’t there a saying that two people can not remember the same thing same way.
The thing with certain moments and images becoming most vivid recollections of some experiences is a curious one too.
Ah, I just dreamt of a trip to New York. And now, reading this post, I could not hep, but wonder – would it still be as important centre of culture and life on earth in another 100 years, or 200? Would someone read this post in the future and wish they could relive the glorious past.
Sorry for random musing, thanks again for the post 🙂
I love this. You weave points and anecdotes together so well- we really hear you when reading it. The photographs really pop and create a nice feel too. Very well done.
Consider this. Along with the evolving and changing body of sensory memories, the heart’s emotional response memories, the mind’s data memories of thoughts, ideas, exercised abilities (eg. communication skills), a diversity of intellectual information fully or partially digested, the ‘to do list’ memories of mundane life, let’s add soul memories- one or many lives, one or many timelines, one or many variations of each timeline (the wonderful illusions of spacetime we use to create our experiences here as everything happens simultaneously in an eternal Now). The wonder is that we creative beings remember so much in this early phase of our Human evolution. I don’t recall what I ate last week, but I do remember who I am. I’m delighted with your thought provoking posts and am grateful you are such an adept writer:)
You have some really interesting posts! This one in particular, I like how you bring travel, anecdotes, thought provoking issues all together in a post…Thanks for liking my post on Italy 🙂 You are a very good writer!
This was such a thought provoking read and I find the memory of the shower nozzle quite amusing. I’ve spent a lot of my professional career in development,researching the Democratic Republic of Congo’s resource curse and the irony of present day Belgium,given its colonial past never ceases to amaze me.
Wow, great post – great way to use travel to illustrate a thought-provoking idea. It’s funny what we remember and what we re-write or forget!
amazing post with amazing pictures. Loved it to the core. Thank you for stopping by on my blog too. Enjoy the day
I’ve enjoyed reading through your posts. Very thoughtful, witty and honest writing. I look forward to more!
I went to Illinois a few years ago to visit the town that one of my literary heroes (Carl Sandburg) grew up in. This was a great moment for me, but my clearest memory is definitely a chicken-fried steak and biscuits and gravy breakfast I had over there. You can make all the jokes you want about men remembering things with their stomachs, but I hear what your saying about only remembering the sort of silly things that happen when you travel.
Enjoyed reading this. Don’t agree completely with all of it, but that didn’t lessen the pleasure I got from reading it. And that first photo is amazing!
Thanks, great post, and nicely written, as already written by previous commenters above.
Love your writing style!
I’d love to hear the absolutely filthy limerick. I only wish I could hear you recite it from memory.
A very nice piece. It’s strange how I can remember certain things on a trip but not others. Or specific things 10 years ago, but not what I did at work for the whole previous week! I’m a really, really newbie on the blog scene (2 months, 9 posts) so I appreciate you visiting my site and follow. Most of my posts so far are road trips and poetry translations, but I hope to be as expansive as you are someday.
By memory? That entire list? I wish. Welcome to menopause. Never going to happen but did enjoy your post and the fact that you are following me. Thanks. I’ll be back.
Reblogged this on Smorgasbord – Variety is the spice of life and commented:
Blessed are the forgetful – memories – a bit like fishing yarns can definitely change with the telling of them. Having lived with my mother whose recall of 1925 was a great deal sharper than 2012, I began to doubt my own memories because events that I seemed to remember so clearly from my childhood seemed to be vastly different to how my 95 year old mother remembered them. So was this the dementia or was it because when the events happened I was between the ages of three and ten and my mother would have been between 40 and 50 years old. Perhaps a childs comprehension and an adult’s perception fixes those memories for all time in different ways. A very interesting post and blog. As I Please….
I agree. Like you, memories of travel to other places are of small and sometimes silly things. Many thanks for following my blog. I appreciate it.
great posts! anyone who can not only quote Nabokov but do so relevantly and not to just appear well-read is darn good in my book (the title of which is, strangely, “77 Ways to Cook Chicken”.)
Great read. I find memory a terrible thing these days. I think the older I get the more I have to compartmentalize areas of my life. But I agree its the ridiculous events that stay fresh in mind more often than the informative if not essential information. If I was ever ship wrecked on an island no matter how many times I watched a documentary on how to start a fire or source water or find food, I’d probably never be able to recall the important events exactly, being too busy remembering how the survival specialist in question fell out of the boat upon arriving..
An interesting, thoughtful blog you’ve got going here. Thanks for checking out mine. Peace and best, John
and it all comes out in the wash…
Thank you for the follow on my blog. I visited a number of your posts and find them thoughtful and well-written. I especially like the literary references and points of personal experience. I will do a Follow here and look forward to reading more!
My wife is Danish, and for years, has “raked” her brain when trying to recall something. This seems to me an improvement over the American “racked” brain. I visualize a metaphorical rake combing over my brain’s detritus and sorting out the nuggets I was looking for. Your essay (as are most of them) is a lovely work. Thanks for checking out my blog. I intend to follow yours.
Yes, your memory is deceptive. Be aware of the fact or you will get burned.
minor note… the term “dark ages” has been criticized by historians since the middle of the 20th century. turns out that they weren’t particularly dark after all! anyway, i’d keep the sentence and just specify the period of historiography.
interestingly enough, forgetfulness is actually an adaptation. people can find themselves with eidetic memories after being hit on the head in the just the right way. you’re quite correct in saying that we are better off (at least in evolutionary terms) for being able to forget.
Thank you for following me and the support. Your blog was incredibly charming and made me smile and laugh to myself while I was reading it. You are so right and different levels, and it was all put together in a way for the easily distracted like me to actually learn something. I look forward to more. Keep remembering and writing it all down. P.S. My brothers say I have lived another childhood because what I remember has nothing to do with their memories. Be love.
I am struggling for the right word, but I think thought-provoking would suffice for the moment. I read somewhere that the sub-conscious you is the real you. Everything visible to others is affected. While we will certainly learn more about everything, like memory, we will, perhaps, also learn that there is even more we don’t know. But that is the fine balance of life. I will make do with what I know and remember. No more. No less.
Great Read! I was wondering if I could extract some quotes and narrative that you have talked about in this post as part of my research on my own blog. I will of course quote you and direct the user towards this blog?
Regards,
R
Sure thing, have fun with it 🙂 a link to your post would be great, Thanks.
Cool post! It made me think of “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.” At least, my memory of it, lol.
I’ve thought a lot about this subject in relation to writing. I agree with Joan Didion, “not only do I have trouble distinguishing between what happened and what merely might have happened, but I remain unconvinced that the distinction, for my purposes, matters. Of course, this idea can get one into trouble, as she also states, and I think is true, at least in nonfiction, “writer’s are always selling someone out.”
I can’t tell a joke to save my life, but,I’ve got the poems covered, and the song, now I just need a filthy limerick! Thank you for the entertaining post.
Wonderful article. I’ve always loved thinking about memory…or at least I think have
I have a similar memory of Vancouver, I had an incredible time and can discuss things I saw and did…but my one single vivid memory is seeing a woman steal a handful of nuts from outside a shop.
Incidentally, have you got any good gallery/food recommendations for New York? I’m going in a few weeks!
I would say that Katz Deli is an absolute must. Mcsorley’s is very cool. To be honest, there’s something incredible on pretty much every street.
Sometimes I worry about my um, short term memory. But I have to agree with you – “Memory, much like character, is by its very nature an incredibly flawed system, and we are probably all the better for it” Good, interesting post!
That was brilliant, my eldest son, who’s at university in Leuven (20mins) was in Brussels last w/e at the European quarter, €6 on a train – lucky him. he said he will go again as there is loads to see. I completely get the Socrates quote – and only recently asked my son – why after all these millennia, is education still failing a vast number of children! Re: memory it’s a bit like selected deafness I think. I can clearly remember being an infant crying in my pram or the front room (nap time) until someone came and picked me up. But I can’t remember where I left something five minutes ago lol 🙂 x