In trying to remember what I learned today of note, then barely being able to remember the basics of what I even did all day, what I did remember was this interview I heard on Fresh Air yesterday (?) with a woman who wrote a book about the normal memory loss which accompanies growing older. See how irony plagues me? Well, anyway, I haven’t made time to revisit the interview (although I do have it bookmarked- score one for me!), but from the notes I’d scrawled in my book while I was driving, there seems to be more than one type of memory- semantic and episodic- otherwise known as the memory of stuff we learn and the memory of stuff we’ve done. When these types of memory choose to cross paths is of great curiosity to me.
Very interesting, indeed, since I often catch myself forgetting names of things and so I have to make up a long string of words to describe said thing and then everyone I am talking to gets bored and starts looking around the room and then I get all nervous because I know I’ve lost my audience and then and then and and and uhhhh, I totally forget what my point was. I mean, in this example. I know what my point is now, see, because I am writing it. It’s different. But why is writing it different, I wonder? And how come the kids in my life seem to be my best audience? Maybe because I act like a kid; to them I am surely a curiosity.
I digress.
This supposed memory loss thing is actually relevant to my performance work in that I have written a proposal detailing a project in which I will perform the digging of a series of concentric trenches, to be filmed in Super8 and projected from a hole upwards into a large military-issue parachute which is caught in some trees. There, now you know my secret. Don’t wake the dagron, if you know what I mean.
So the point of digging in general is thousandfold as a matter of self-constructed improbability and preposterousness, in mimicking the debris-filled valleys of waxen LP records shifting through time, in terms of getting closer to the ground by nearly being swallowed by it, by challenging myself to willingly tear my hands apart through construction of this lock-grooved structure, to not know whether to begin from the core of the target or work my way in from the single most enormous and laborious of circles, to relate this structure to advancements in military architecture- particularly regarding the trench warfare of WWI- and the stasis/futility of global argument… oh, I could go on.
These concentric trenches, these land-locked paths of memory, so to speak- I sure thought I knew what I was talking about when I wrote my proposal. I suppose I did, having proposed nothing more than a large-scale theory, as it must be because theory is precisely what a proposal claims (as opposed to actual practice). But now that I’ve heard all this mess about types of memory, I am wondering beyond the structure of memory and the structure of the trench and I am wandering about, cutting paths from idea to next idea, asking myself if this proposed piece may happen to become less about memory itself and more about the search for memory (hence the digging and futility of).
∴
Relatedly in a Doctor Who time-warp sort of way: This morning as I exited my lovely shower, from outside the bathroom window in that sprawling Great Oak-looking tree that sprouts from the nu-hippies’ yard, I heard what sounded like an army of crows mercilessly cawing. I know enough about birds to recognize that those insistent caws mean trouble. I ran to get my Zoom mic and bounded out the back door into the 15 degree morning in my robe, nearly knocking over the resident tiniest ever-pregnant cat with the screen door. Much to my dismay, at sensing my presence, the crows flew away across the street so I couldn’t get as great of a recording as I would have liked. Argh! To be see-through and still able to hold stuff in my hands!
Not surprisingly, the crows were chasing a hawk away from their turf. Farther and farther they charged and I started getting cold and bored, so I went in. Four hours later on the highway headed home from teaching, I spied a black cloud out of the corner of my eye- it was the crows still chasing the hawk! Now, I know it possibly wasn’t the same party of crows and the same rascally hawk, but this what I am talking about when I refer to paths and, in particular, paths of memory. As I was incredulating over this development, my mind made a physical path- a map- that those birds must have taken to get allllll the way to the highway from my house, a possible 7-mile journey, which I fully understand is no big whoop for a bird…
And another: Two days ago, parked out by the dumpster in one of the alleys by my house sat a dejected kid-sized toy VW bug. Electric, convertible, silver. I thought, Who would throw away a perfectly good little car like that? Especially in such a callous manner, out with the trash! I kept walking. The next day, the car had moved and was parked a block away in front of the elementary school. I smiled, enjoying how the little bug was still getting its ride on, and hoped it wouldn’t get mistreated. This evening as I was riding my bike home from the retail job, I spied this little bug sitting all belonely under a yellow streetlight, its tinted plastic windshield broken beyond repair. Now that this little bug has proven that it can still make its paths even though it was discarded, I am excited to re-find it again tomorrow, as perhaps we will both be on similar enough paths to be of note to one another.
