My relationship with memory
Word Count: 2607
Section 1: Impermanence
A couple days ago, I was in Dallas with my family, visiting family friends for a series of birthdays and Christmas celebrations. At the end of this day, my cousin’s grandmother wanted to play the Saraswati veena for us all, a stringed instrument typically used in Carnatic Indian classical music. She started playing when she was nine years old, and when she played for us three days ago, she was 77. For thirty minutes, I was reminded of my 6th grade trip to South India, eating with my hands off a banana leaf plate with my classmates, revelling in the humid heat of Kerala. Her eyes were closed, but her worn hands were true and for that half hour, I was mesmerised. And yet, three days later, I remember her face, her eyes, her hands, her posture, but precious little of the music itself. It’s interesting; the one thing that I cared about the most in that moment was what I remembered the least.
Over the summer, I went to Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra in New York to watch Wynton Marsalis and his band play with traditional Indian instrumentalists from both Hindustani and Carnatic backgrounds, in a performance called “The Rhythms of India”. What I remember was that it was fantastic, and I felt moved. Clearly, live music tends to have that effect on me. There was one particular drum solo that I recall being ingrained in my memory for a month after the performance, but as it stands, it’s disappeared, replaced by what feels like a cheap imitation conjured by the mind, even if the memory of the emotions I felt at the performance remain intact. As an aside, if you can, try your best to watch Wynton Marsalis; he’s a fantastic performer and cultivator of the jazz arts, and his “Big Band Holidays” albums are fantastic.
In the seventh grade, I was on a bit of a tear with reading; I had gotten through most of Agatha Christie’s works, and was moving on to sci-fi. My young mind got through a couple books of Frank Herbert’s “Dune”, “Brave New World”, and some of Asimov’s seminal works, like “Foundation” and “I, Robot”. Last week, I went to Barnes and Noble with my friend and stumbled upon “Foundation” again, and picked it up. Now, given my fantastic use of the rule of three here, I’m sure you can see where I’m going with this. But what good is it to say I’ve read “Foundation” if I can’t recall it? Is there any pride, any sense of accomplishment, to be had with saying, “I’ve read all of Poirot!”, if one has a scant recollection regardless? Or is it the emotions we carry on after the fact, the sensations that linger in the mind and perhaps the body, that are of value or import?
As a further extension of that idea, and a brief detour from the overall point, I feel as though this discussion lends itself nicely to tackling the idea of impermanence. Take jazz, for example; I can go to a jazz bar and listen to a wholly unique rendition of a standard, by virtue of improvisation and a skilled band. I can play with my friends, and feel alive as we enable and push each other to grow as musicians. But in the same vein, I can listen to the great Miles Davis’ solo on So What again and again, replaying what was, to him, a single moment in 1959. Does this permanence dull its impact on us? Does experiencing something live, but having to deal with the fallibility of memory change its effect on us? To be sure, I prefer live music, and I’d be remiss in saying it doesn’t have its own special way of brightening my day, but I can just as easily get a vinyl of an album I love, and have the sound pour through good speakers, close my eyes, and teleport myself. Glenn Stallcop says on his blog:
“Ideas are only pure in their abstract form. In reality, they are fleeting and fragile events. Plato thought that Concepts were the only true reality, and life was just an imperfect reflection or shadow. But actually, it is the reverse which is true. Reality is messy and in constant flux. It is Concepts which are the simple approximations of fleeting moments.”
It’s a sobering thought, that everything is technically destined for decay. Some day, there will come a time when Miles Davis’ So What recording from 1959 is played for the last time. Some day, the last page of Tintin will be turned. Some day, someone will watch Grey’s Anatomy for the last time (thank god). My evidently muddled thoughts on (im)permanence have informed a fair few aspects of how I approach the world, and these thoughts are intimately tied to how I approach memory, or the art of remembering things with intentionality.
Section 2: Memory, Loving, and Knowing
My memory is interesting. I tend to remember vivid flashes of memory from various points in my life – I can, for example, recall when I dropped a die-cast model Discovery Space Shuttle on my foot when I was four years old, at our old house a couple miles from where I’m writing this. I can remember my first (and I believe only) goal in my high school soccer career, running into the box and sliding into the ball, watching it sail past the keeper into the mid left of the net. Being shocked, happy, pumping my fist. I can remember deciding whether or not to take a nap during my APUSH exam (I ended up napping for 10 minutes and then taking the exam anyway). But on the flipside, my short term memory sucks. I forget what I did a couple hours ago, yesterday, last week. It takes an insane amount of effort to remember if I took a shower, or I ate, or I did a task. I have a calendar which I rely on for almost everything, and I mean everything. It has the usual – classes, birthdays (we will come back to this later), tasks, but it also has things like “Call Parents”, “eat”, “go to bed, dumbass”, “check in with friends”, etc. This calendar acts as a storage for some of my mental load, for better or worse. Whether a function of my brain or other factors, I seem to thrive off of regularity, and my calendar is a vehicle for that. I guess in some ways, regularity can make each day seem less meaningful? If the same thing happens each day, the days may blend together. Alternatively, having regularity can make the bright interjections even brighter; going for lunch with my friends, having a nice dinner with my family, visiting Dallas to see my cousins.
A related thought I had, which has come up with my family and partner before, is the idea of memory specifically as it relates to spontaneity. To me, spontaneity is formulaic. You begin by remembering someone or something, and from there you can plan out how to act on it. Some studies do show that spontaneity can be triggered by the reactivation of stored memories, so at least in some sense, my approach isn’t unfounded, but this sort of naturally begs the question: if I offset the mental load of tasks to a calendar, does that make them less meaningful to others? This is something I continue to struggle with, and not something I have the answer to, although it helps to verbalize it here.
“To be loved is to be known” is a quote that resonates quite a bit with me. I don’t really know why, but there’s something warm and sweet in being able to coexist around others, knowing they understand you fundamentally, and it’s changed how I love and show love, in some ways. Interestingly enough, the way I first realized this about myself was through my love of NBC sitcoms. At the time of writing, I’ve watched The Office around 3 or 4 times all the way through, and the first 4 seasons even more. I’ve watched Parks and Recreation at least twice, and I could, at one point, give you the season and episode number of any episode of the first three seasons of Community if you gave me a plot point or two. These shows have shaped who I am in some way, and taught me pop culture, made me appreciate certain styles of humor, and made me glean more about myself in many ways. I will always love them. As it does, however, time passes, and I find it harder to remember the shows’ intimate details, even though I retain the emotions of watching them, and the vibes and enjoyment I had. As an aside, a point of pride for me is feeling as though I know the characters, even if I forget the content. I am almost always able to get into the frame of mind of characters I care about. These shows have clearly impacted me permanently (I make far too many references to count, these days), but it scares me.
Should love be constant and uniform, then? What do we say about the friend we talk to every day, compared to the friend we reach out to once a year and pick up immediately where we left off? Another thing with shows, and media more generally, is the preservation of the image in my mind. As I mentioned earlier, sometimes all I remember of a piece of media is the emotion it brought to me, some memories of the feelings naturally stronger than others (whether by virtue of recency or otherwise). There occasionally exists this tension between my desire to re-up my memory of the content, and my fear of tarnishing the memory of the feeling. Take Avatar: The Last Airbender, for example. I first watched Avatar my sophomore year of high school, and I loved it. Truly; the plot and characters were moving, and I still follow along with the Darkhorse comics and other content that’s released (original movie notwithstanding). That was 5 years ago, though. I’ve grown and hopefully matured as a person, my perspectives have changed, and my humor has changed as well. Watching Avatar now could very well taint my enjoyment of it, past, present, and future. This idea has stopped me from (re)watching a handful of shows that I know I loved, but couldn’t bear the thought of losing the feelings for. Something to work on, or maybe let be.
Continuing with the maxim of loving as knowing, we turn back to interpersonal relationships (oh joy)! This is something I have a curious relationship with (heh), and it stems from an unintentionally strict application of our aforementioned maxim. Similar to characters, I love people by knowing them. Their hobbies, their strengths, their character (for lack of a better word), but also the facts. Their birthdays, their addresses, their families, their accomplishments. I take some pride in being able to wish someone a Happy Birthday early in the day, because I knew it was their birthday! In a very “treat others as you’d like to be treated” way, I imagine that others appreciate being remembered and known just as I would, which is a slight misconception. Sometimes, birthdays feel sad for this reason; it feels as though the people that matter most seem to forget, but I try my best to remind myself that even though I treat this as a maxim, it’s local to me. I don’t really think “love language” categorizations are fair or really accurate, but it’s certainly the case that the act of love is unique to each individual. In any case, I’ve thought about how I love and how it ties in to remembering for quite a bit, and once again it’s nice to put an idea to paper (GDocs).
Section 3: Permanence
Pictures and I go way back. I used to want to be a photographer, actually; I got pretty good at Photoshop and Lightroom (as well as a middle schooler could be, at least), and took lots of photographs of landscapes, animals, et cetera. Crucially, I feel the need to point out here that I pirated both, and I vehemently despise Adobe for their subscription model and insane AI practices over the last few years. End minirant. The other side of photography was actually being photographed. For whatever reason, being photographed and thereby being perceived is, or at least was, kind of terrifying to me. A possible reason for this is that by immortalizing a part of me that I didn’t want you to know or see, I feel worse. I do distinctly remember feeling worse about my figure and face growing up; I didn’t like how skinny I was and I didn’t like my smile. This seems to have translated in some way to an aversion to being photographed. It’s gotten a bit better recently, as has my smile (at least I seem to think so, which is what really matters), but the foundations of the fear were quite curious in my opinion. Of course, the other perspective that arises with photographs ties back to our discussion of permanence. There will inevitably be a time when your loved ones leave you – it could even be you first. What do you do when they’re gone? Will you remember them faithfully, and how can you guarantee that? More pointedly, will the memory of the feelings they incited and the emotions surrounding your cumulative interactions be valuable enough to offset the inevitable decay of memory? I don’t remember my Dadu’s voice or face, because I wasn’t really conscious then. We have precious few pictures of him, and he exists primarily in the consciousness of my father and my Dadi. It’s sobering. For all the reasons above, having pictures, videos, and other means of permanence make for a safe back-up of one’s memory.
In the vein of permanence, another thing to think about is sentimentality and one’s legacy; the ways in which we’re remembered, either in the minds of others, through actions making their mark, or objects of significance. For example, I recently had a conversation with my father about watches. He wears an Apple watch most days, but has a few assorted watches that are particularly important to him, including a few gifts from my Nanu, which he cherishes. Through this watch, the memory of my Nanu is shared long after he’s gone (although we hope that isn’t soon), and in it is a special reminder of the relationship between my Nanu and my father as well. As for legacy, that’s a little more involved. What goal do I want when it comes to my legacy? Do I want to be remembered as a good worker, a visionary, a great family man? How consciously should I think about the image of me in others’ minds, and how to form and shape that image? I suppose realistically, only time will tell, and hopefully I can remember to check in on this treatise of sorts and reflect on it.
The end and beginning
All this started because I asked the question, “If I say I like(d) something, but I don’t remember the content, did I ever really”? I still don’t really know. I think maturing will be realizing eventually that although the decay and fallibility of the mind is inevitable, we can respect that, enjoy the emotions as they pass and linger, and move on. I’m not sure if that’s currently satisfying to me, but it’s what I’ve landed on and I’ve also been typing for about 4 hours, give or take, so there.
I hope you enjoyed,
– Arjun