more and more with my struggles with memory (some one who does not think she has a bad memory but will tell people she does because it appears she does) i wonder if forgetting is some crucial ritual that humans find themselves perplexed with. of course there is so much which burdens a human being (language, time, other humans) but memory might be the one most devilish gift-curse. i saw a film today morning (wild strawberries) the protagonist can only live when he indulges in his memories, but in order to indulge in them he has to make a point to forget them in his daily life, to live austerely and remember them, all at once, in dreams sharp and potent. it is strange that i should see portions of perfect sense this week as well, which deals with a deadly contagion which robs people of their five senses. it is only when they are about to lose a certain sense are they overwhelmed with the sense - for example, before losing one's sense of smell, the characters are flooded with memories sharp evocative - memories which are triggered by smell.
it's such a cliched topic i think, 'absence makes the heart grow fonder' or 'hunger is the best condiment' but there is something so intrinsically paradoxical and truthful about it - forget sadnesses in order to Live, but one can't Live unless they have experienced the sadness. and how can the act of forgetting ever be on purpose? or can it be? your dog dies, get a new one, knowing that you are doing it to forget therefore you aren't really getting a new dog but getting a new-dog-which-isn't-your-dead-dog -- and perhaps, then, you want to make it clear to yourself that it isn't your dead dog you see in your new dog and so you recreate the feeling of missing your dead dog, so you look at pictures to remind yourself -- and then consciously 'forget' it again as you play with your 'new' dog. such a delicate and tricky balance, remembrance/non remembrance in the same breath. or it is all a giant puddle of memories, and the human brain as they say can only hold 7 things at a time -- knowing you can only hold 7 things at a time therefore you are holding far more
i was trapped, too (the way you might have been, reader, reading this last paragraph) with the old professor in wild strawberries and with the two lovers in perfect sense. it is most obvious that the deadly virus is no more than some psychological construct (metaphorized as a deadly contagion) but more importantly, it was self inflicted, it has to be, one has to create this feeling of knowing that all senses will be gone in order to appreciate these senses, and yet yet all of this is shown with the utmost incredulity, shock almost that the senses are going -- and it's this shock that is fabricated in the same way that getting a 'new' dog is fabricated, it needs to be play acted in order for the game to work, in order to really feel sharply, feel strongly, appreciate senses, or whatever it is that you can only appreciate once you have lost it (be it your body for an aging person, so on)
and even this, this old man in wild strawberries looking at this picture you can see how infantile he looks on his arms and knees, mouth slightly open in a garden (a symbolic womb perhaps) revisiting his childhood because to have reached this age, every other sensation has been experienced and re-experienced to the point of numbness and he simply wants to feel it all over again, feel it newly, he must now (symbolically) return to the womb, be born again in order to experience.
where does that leave us - self conscious human beings with something as slippery and monumental as Memory in our palms?
it's such a cliched topic i think, 'absence makes the heart grow fonder' or 'hunger is the best condiment' but there is something so intrinsically paradoxical and truthful about it - forget sadnesses in order to Live, but one can't Live unless they have experienced the sadness. and how can the act of forgetting ever be on purpose? or can it be? your dog dies, get a new one, knowing that you are doing it to forget therefore you aren't really getting a new dog but getting a new-dog-which-isn't-your-dead-dog -- and perhaps, then, you want to make it clear to yourself that it isn't your dead dog you see in your new dog and so you recreate the feeling of missing your dead dog, so you look at pictures to remind yourself -- and then consciously 'forget' it again as you play with your 'new' dog. such a delicate and tricky balance, remembrance/non remembrance in the same breath. or it is all a giant puddle of memories, and the human brain as they say can only hold 7 things at a time -- knowing you can only hold 7 things at a time therefore you are holding far more
i was trapped, too (the way you might have been, reader, reading this last paragraph) with the old professor in wild strawberries and with the two lovers in perfect sense. it is most obvious that the deadly virus is no more than some psychological construct (metaphorized as a deadly contagion) but more importantly, it was self inflicted, it has to be, one has to create this feeling of knowing that all senses will be gone in order to appreciate these senses, and yet yet all of this is shown with the utmost incredulity, shock almost that the senses are going -- and it's this shock that is fabricated in the same way that getting a 'new' dog is fabricated, it needs to be play acted in order for the game to work, in order to really feel sharply, feel strongly, appreciate senses, or whatever it is that you can only appreciate once you have lost it (be it your body for an aging person, so on)
and even this, this old man in wild strawberries looking at this picture you can see how infantile he looks on his arms and knees, mouth slightly open in a garden (a symbolic womb perhaps) revisiting his childhood because to have reached this age, every other sensation has been experienced and re-experienced to the point of numbness and he simply wants to feel it all over again, feel it newly, he must now (symbolically) return to the womb, be born again in order to experience.
where does that leave us - self conscious human beings with something as slippery and monumental as Memory in our palms?
I wonder if you've seen (or read) Krapp's Last Tape by Samuel Beckett?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOUf5etSTRo
The womb analogy really didn't occur to me at the time, but reading it I was remembered that novel by Michel Tournier (or was it Fournier?) and the whole womb/island one. A true return to the human before he's aware of it's own consciousness. I think the dreams sequences were the most interesting. I like to see you swim in a sensorial movie analysis sea.
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