A Fragile Art

The Mysteries of Memory

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On the day I couldn’t find my keys I somehow recalled entire song lyrics from a band I hadn’t thought about in decades. The keys are somewhere in my apartment, still unfound. I don’t know where the Britpop songs from the 90s have been hiding either.

Proust had his madeleine, one bite of which makes “it all come rushing back.” In old Marcel’s case it was childhood sensory associations with his grandmother’s house. Sometimes it’s the opening guitar riff that gets you started. I thought I had a good memory, but that may apply to preferred topics at certain times in one’s life. I’m fascinated whether memory is about effort or a natural way one’s mind works.

I write things down because I want to remember them. Every aging fisherman knows better than to trust his memory. Like writing, memory is about emphasis and editing. You think that everybody else at a party remembers exactly what you do, though it’s quite possible that you’re all alone. What mattered to you, what was inescapable, didn’t strike people as bizarre. Or maybe you thought somebody viewed an event with the same incredible meaning you did and they completely forgot about it. This happens to me quite a lot.

I was sure that the best scene in the worst movie was in Open Water, when the sharks show up but you don’t see them until the lightning flashes and they’re suddenly all visible. So I watched this appalling movie again just to see the scene and it’s not like that at all. My memory expanded the drama in the retelling. Just another fish story.

Sometimes we impose greatness on a place and returning is a disappointment. It doesn’t even have to be greatness and can be bigness. Schools and childhood bedrooms are famously smaller in the revisitation. But it’s not just about when you were young and everything felt monumental. Memory can be self-serving, naturally, but it can also emphasize things that aren’t nearly as bad as you recall.

I was standing by a river with a friend when the odds of us catching an Atlantic Salmon, always slim, felt even slimmer than usual. As we got to some good water he said, “Let’s make a memory, Coggins.” I broke down laughing because he meant it as a joke but also earnestly. We knew if either of us caught a fish we’d remember it for a long time. And you know what? We did and he was right.

Phones, as usual, aren’t doing their part. At first we think taking photos or videos help us remember an event. It seems like it’s the contrary. We’ve all stood at concerts when every person is holding up their phone taking a video they’ll never watch. You don’t commit the experience to memory because you’re not fully present in the first place.

One of the things that helps me organize my time, call it a life lesson if you like, is that I’d rather spend my time doing things worth remembering. I try to minimize filler. The Masters takes some getting used to because you’re in an amazing place without a phone. You realize the impulse we all have to documenting things instead of experiencing them.

Do we really want to be left with photos and videos in place of memories? And if you’re trying to get the shot in the first place are you actually in the spirit of the restaurant or the Kentucky Derby or wherever you are? Memories are impressions, sometimes the strongest ones, but they are not always facts. That’s all right. Our sense of memory may wax and wane, it may let us down or prop us up, but, in the end it reminds us what matters and that we were really there.