 |
Thanks For the Memory©2002 David Boyne
|
|---|
What is memory?
I think that memory is an art.
Memory, like all artistic expression, is rooted in reality,
in our sensual perception of reality, and our rational interpretation
of reality, but has little, if anything, to do with exactly,
literally, recording or transcribing reality.
What is history?
I think that history is an art, too. When I've told people
how I consider history to be an art, and historians to be
artists, they have been very upset with me. They try to
convert me to their belief that memory is a recording of
reality, and that history is a record of what actually happened.
I change the subject. "So how 'bout them Yankees?"
What is time?
I've heard it said that Nature created time to keep everything
from happening at once. I like that. And I will add this:
Nature created memory to keep everything from happening
only once.
Because memory is time travel.
Practicing the art of Memory is time travel for one—think
of it as backpacking through time.
Practicing the art of History is time travel for escorted
groups—think of it as taking a chartered bus tour through
time.
I could be wrong, but I believe every human being, and indeed,
every life form on this planet, practices the art of memory
in a way that is as unique as their very being.
My memory, when it comes to accuracy, is totally unreliable.
In the past, when in relationships with people who had memories
as accurate as the transcript of a court proceeding, I was
always found guilty. They were no doubt right in their judgement
of me, but my point is that I was incompetent to be on trial
in the first place, as I could not participate in my own
defense.
I can’t remember words to save my life or recite a
sonnet. I can't remember numbers, especially numbers used
to denote money. I cannot remember the simplest sequence
of events, even enough to fill out a traffic accident report.
I can, however, remember sights, sounds, smells, tastes,
and touches—but again, none of them accurately.
I can tell you what the sky and the light were like the
first time I saw the Golden Gate Bridge fifteen years ago,
but I can’t tell you, accurately, from memory, what
I may have said two minutes ago. In the very moment when
I am creating a memory, I am changing it, altering it.
Given my fractured mosaic of memory, it amuses me no end
that what I am about to assert, I do firmly believe: memory
is the central mechanism of evolution—for an individual,
a nation, a species.
Consider B. F. Skinner's rats. Skinner put some rats in
cages and conditioned them to expect a pellet of food to
be dropped into their cage every time they pressed on a
lever. Ho-hum.
Then Skinner changed the world—at least, he changed
the world of those caged rats. Skinner wanted to see what
happened if he made the pellet of food drop into the rat's
cage only every fifth time they pressed the lever. Whoa!
Hysteria. Frantic pressing of the lever in desperate effort
to regain the expected, somehow lost, food pellets.
Yet, over time, the rats became re-conditioned. New memory
asserted itself, and they learned to expect the food to
drop into their cage after the fifth pressing of the lever.
Back to ho-hum.
Then Skinner played god, yet again. He had the manna-like
pellets of food drop into the cages without rhyme or reason
or rhythm—not related to the number or frequency of
lever pressings. The rats, unable to determine a pattern,
pressed the lever unrelentingly. Despite randomly receiving
an occasional pellet of food, the rats were so consumed
by the "memory" of the pellets of food that they
should have been receiving but were not receiving, that
they would not stop pressing the lever, would not stop trying
to make the lost pellets come back.
With these experiments in intermittent reinforcement, Skinner
discovered what the gambling industry had known since the
dawn of history: If we win only rarely, it drives us nuts
and we can’t stop trying because we never know when
we will win, or if we will ever win again, and we suspect
those pellets of food are going somewhere and why the hell
aren't they coming to us when we're just as deserving if
not more so than the slob slamming the lever on the machine
next to us?
"Just one more try! I know the pellet will drop on
the next try! 78,543 has always been my lucky number!"
What all of that has to do with memory being the center-spring
of evolution, I've no idea. I've forgotten the point I was
trying to make. No great loss.
Ah, loss. Why is the memory of what we have lost more powerful
than the memory of what we possess?
We have the ability to travel through time, by memory and
by history, and the most popular destinations we journey
to are the people and places and things that we have lost.
There are only two ways to remember what we once had, and
lost.
One way to remember a loss is with anger.
This is called a grudge. A grudge is complex. It has five
parts. First, you must remember something that you have
lost. Second, you must be pissed off about the loss. Third,
you must choose to remain pissed off about the loss, perhaps
for as long as you are alive. Fourth, you must blame someone
for your loss. Fifth, you must want to make that someone
suffer as much as you are suffering from holding on to your
grudge.
While grudges all begin in memory, if they are accepted
by a group they can travel beyond the limits of one lifetime
and become history.
Imagine holding onto anger over a loss, holding on to it
for your entire life. Then imagine passing that anger over
a loss on to your children. Then imagine your children passing
that anger over a loss on to their children, and on, and
on.
If you can't imagine this, there's an easier way to see
the effects of holding a grudge: read a newspaper. For little
grudges, read the local news. For big grudges, read the
national news. For historical grudges, read the international
news.
Holding a grudge is one of the stupidest of the many stupid
human tricks. My dog is incapable of holding a grudge. I
think David Letterman should have people on his show who
are holding grudges so all the pets in America can have
a good laugh.
Where was I? Oh, yes: The other way to remember a loss is
much easier: remember the loss in any way you care to, so
long as you don't remember it with anger.
I prefer this method of remembering my losses. I can remember
a loss on Monday with sorrow; on Tuesday, I can remember
my loss with embarrassment. During the rest of the week
I might remember my loss with regret, remorse, reason, ridicule,
wisdom, humor, shame, denial or compassion. My usual memory
of any particular loss is a complex and shifting mix of
all the above. I like that my memories are always changing;
they never bore me.
Okay. So if we use memory to revisit, to travel through
time and gain a glancing experience of something that happened
only once and is lost forever to us, then what is an actual
memory?
I think a memory is the one truely private property that
we can own.
A memory is exclusively ours. Yet we have not taken it from
the common weal; we created it ourselves. Our memories are
not like beach front land or reservoirs of oil— memories
are not finite resources that we've claimed as our own,
fenced off to exclude others, and erected legal systems
to help us maintain control over. We just have them, hold
them, and nothing is missing from anyone else's inventory.
We can share a memory, if we choose. But if we don't, no
one will go hungry: everyone has his or her own memories.
Unlike sport utility vehicles and big-screen televisions,
a really big memory requires no more raw materials from
the planet than a really small memory. The size and potency
of our memories is completely up to us, and how we choose
to practice the art.
And a memory cannot be stolen, cannot be plagiarized, cannot
be counterfeited. So far.
Yet any memory we possess we can also expand, upgrade, remodel,
super-size, revise, edit, face-lift, lipo-suction, restock,
repress, distort, or rotate in inventory...
I am the sum of my memories. You may steal my social security
number and credit cards, but they aren't my identity.
Would I be, would I exist, if I had no memory?
Without my memories, only my body would be here. I would
be gone.
Years ago, I heard Elie Weisel lecture at Lewis and Clark
College in Oregon. He spoke about mankind needing to make
a commitment to remembering. Listening to this man who has
committed himself to remembering a holacaust of loss, and
to remembering without anger, I saw how the art of memory
could be any man’s supreme defiance—an incorruptible
assertion of being and individuality.
In his speech, Elie Weisel asked his listeners to consider
what might be the most horrifying disease known to mankind—
Was it cancer? AIDS? Hate?
He said it was Alzheimer’s disease.
Elie Weisel said that, with its destruction of all memory,
its erasure of all individuality while the body lives on,
Alzheimer’s disease is the worst disease imaginable.
Elie Weisel is right.