Sunday, April 17, 2011

We'll Always Have Paris

Too often we talk about our memories as if they were banks into which we deposit new information when it comes in, and from which we withdraw old information when we need it. But that metaphor doesn't reflect the way our memories really work. Our memories are always with us, shaping and being shaped by the information flowing through our senses, in a continuous feedback loop. Everything we see, hear, and smell is inflected by all the things we've seen, heard, and smelled in the past.--from Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything by Joshua Foer

How Proustian!

Moonwalking with Einstein is a gripping, inspiring read about the capabilities of the human mind to remember (and how as a culture we tend to forget more and more). The book follows Foer's entrance (and ultimate triumph) in a high-stakes memory championship. I highly recommend it!

The "continuous feedback loop" of information from our senses gets me to thinking Rashomon-style that no two people remember the same event in exactly the same way. As I am finishing the memoir I've been working on, I've realized that it is impossible to remember scenes from the past verbatim. How accurate is my memory? My collection of journals helps. Yet undoubtedly, the people I write about will probably say "that's not what happened" when they read the manuscript.

Proust teaches us that the act of remembering can provide brief flashes of insight into parts of ourselves that we don't usually tap into, parts of ourselves we didn't know existed in our conscious, slumbering state. And each memory changes over time, takes on new colors, new contours.

What we see, hear and smell over time adds to this subjective soup that we call memory and shapes our point of view.

I'm reminded of Before Sunset, one of my mother's favorite movies (partly for its scenes of Paris, partly for Ethan Hawke) and I put it on often because it soothes her. I love that scene in the beginning where Jessie--the bestselling author played by Ethan Hawke--is at the Shakespeare Bookstore in Paris during a Q&A session about his book. The first question is, "Do you consider the book to be autobiographical?" Jessie answers:

Isn't everything autobiographical? I mean, we all see the world from our own tiny keyhole. I always think of Thomas Wolfe--have you ever seen that little one-page "note to reader" in front of Look Homeward, Angel? Do you know what I'm  talking about? Anyway, he says how we are the sum of all the moments of our lives, that anybody who writes will use the clay of their lives, that you can't avoid that. I remember he says he can't imagine anything more autobiographical than Gulliver's Travels.

How can we connect if we are constantly having conversations with ourselves? "We'll always have Paris," goes the famous line. But our versions of Paris are as different as our DNA.

I think Proust believes that our memories are what it most beautiful about ourselves and that this solitude we all suffer is a small price to pay for the spectacular fireworks of what we experience when we go within.