Your memories build the road to who you are
I was struck by this quotation from the Paris Review interview with J.H. Prynne in the Fall 2016 issue:
Well, one inhabits a hall of mirrors, a whole series of echoes from reading, from experience, from life practise and the rest. This becomes richer and denser as time goes on. It’s also complicated by forgetfulness, things that you only in part remember.
This is one of the joys of getting older. It can be one of the curses, too.
I was talking to my youngest daughter about memory. She is studying neuroscience and told me that it is now believed that short-term memory and long-term memory are distinct things. It is almost a cliche to talk about old people who seem to be able to remember with precision events and people from their childhood but fail to remember what it is they wanted when they enter a room.
I watch my father and see this happening. We’ll have a conversation about the past and he has no trouble remembering details that I ask him to confirm. But if we talk about things closer in time, he can be flummoxed. And he recognises this and it frustrates him.
Quite what the scientific reasons for this are I don’t know. I do know that alcohol taken to excess prevents the writing of memory and is why we suffer black-outs. The alcoholic can appear to be awake and present in the moment — even if drunk — but he or she will have no memory of that time when sober. Perhaps there is a connection. Perhaps alcohol dampens the release of the chemical that writes memories and with age the supply of the writing chemical becomes depleted. (If the editors of Nature need me to write this up for an article, I’m available.)
Regardless of the cause and effect, there is consolation in memory. Even when remembering bad things, the consolation can come in the form of relief that we got through those times or it could be something as straightforward as a sense of achievement that we can still remember them.
As Prynne implies in the quotation above, a lifetime of memories acquires a richness that is consolation in itself. It can be a sanctuary to seek out in the face of present troubles. It can also be a source of stimulation as well as consolation.
I don’t think it is a coincidence that memoir — or life writing — has become so prevalent in such unsettled times. Examining how we got where we are, both on a personal and societal level, is of obvious interest to any self-examining individual. Delving into our pasts is surely one form of the examined life.
For my own part, if writing is a way to discover my true voice and uncover the things I truly believe, then memories show me a path through what at first appears the rather chaotic landscape of years. Memories actually lay down the stones that make the path.
Whether these memories, as Prynne suggests, may sometimes be faulty, hardly matters. A road can be made of many different materials, after all. What matters is that the road thus constructed — however roughly hewn — finally reveals the haphazard route I took to be the man I am today.
