My relationship with memory (2)
I guess the goal of this exercise, for me, is to see what has changed with regards to my mindset surrounding memory (that’s a very oddly phrased sentence). Basically, have I accrued new perspectives, or are my views largely the same? What minutiae have changed, and why do I think they have? This is an exercise in introspection, especially as I start a new chapter of my life.
My relationship with memory is the old article, for your perusal. Perhaps have them both up, split screen? I figured block quoting one in the other would have been a bit too long.
Section 1: Impermanence
It’s been close to two years since I wrote this piece, and I naturally remember even less about the veena playing than before. I have flashes of it, a vague recollection of the room, where I sat, and so on. I don’t think anyone took pictures or a recording, and if they did, I don’t have access to them right now. If I listened to someone else playing the veena, maybe it’d jog my memory?
Same for the JaLCO performance - even less than the veena. I remember that I was there, that a session happened prior, that Maya and I were on the mezzanine and had a fantastic view and acoustic experience, and I still remember that I liked it a lot.
As a response to my lack of memory, particularly with reading, I’ve tried being more intentional with both what I read and how I read it. I read fanfiction, which, to me, is largely fine to forget, although there are certain pieces that I have bookmarked (actually quite a few, but notable ones that I remember), but since I’m trying to learn more about art history, the books I’m reading I take notes on, read and reread actively, etc. Maya showed me this video by Ryan Holiday which details his four step strategy to reading and retaining, especially for projects. I’m likely to use this in my research, and a (much) more pared down version for my personal reading, because it is quite intense, but realistically this is a “problem” that can be solved. “Problem” is in air quotes only because I think it’s an intrinsic part of the human experience to forget specifics and remember the aura of a time, but there are certainly practical benefits to being able to remember.
I was discussing with a new friend how they use photography to remember moments in time, and I think that’s very common. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and depending on the picture, I agree - sometimes you can glean up to 90% of the context from a single image, sometimes you can recover that exact moment in time with just an image, and so on. I just think this doesn’t work as well for me. My goal with photography, personally, is usually aesthetic in nature; interesting shots that challenge me compositionally, as I’ve probably said somewhere before. With that being said, I think I gain much more from writing down what’s happened (either on paper or by typing it out - the “act of writing” in either case), because it helps me remember better. I’ve started journaling, doing weekly and monthly wrap-ups, and they’ve been rather helpful and kind of eye-opening in tracking what I’ve done and how I’ve progressed in some things. As life gets busier for me soon/now, I hope it becomes more useful. I guess part of me is still on the fence about reducing pictures to pure aesthetics, as I know I get a percent of the context back and can revel in that for a time. The further we are from the date and time of a shot, inevitably the worse our recall will be of that moment, and in that instance, a detailed description of the personally relevant details goes further.
All of this to say impermanence is still true and unavoidable, but there are strategies to mitigate it somewhat? Whether I really want to do that is debatable for a lot of things, but we’re on a trial basis right now I suppose.
Section 2: Memory, Loving, and Knowing
As evidence of the previous point, these written descriptions help jog my memory, although I guess somehow having a POV camera shot would have done the same thing. No Meta glasses for me, though.
I think my short term memory was on the up and up during the summer, but we’ll see if it sticks through grad school. I’ve become more reliant on my calendar again, as scheduled events become more frequent and I panic about forgetting to cook, or eat, or go to the gym. I do notice when I call people (my parents, Maya, my brother) that I’m able to recall more without relying on my calendar. It does help sometimes to have to go back into my calendar and “fill out the past” so I can feel like I’m accurately logging my day, but one day I hope to have an analog system for that, because too much phone is frustrating sometimes. I’ve also adopted some personal strategies to remember things, leaving things in places so I notice them, moving things out of place so I notice them, etc. Sometimes this works, the hit rate is getting mildly better over time, especially as I figure out more and more ways to hack my brain. My calendar still has a clusterfuck of things, and it scares me on a semi-regular basis with the sheer amount of offloading I’m doing, at times.
I’m in a weird spot where every day for the last, say two weeks, has been dissimilar in at least one notable way, it feels. Every day was a new social gathering, or a person I hadn’t met in a while, or a new event/experience, or travel, or any number of other things. Moving my brother in, visiting Maya’s nani’s house, saying hello to Pranav and Abhinav and Yash, going to my cousin’s place in the Bay for the first time, EECS (and NGS) orientation, so many things! It’s exhausting, it’s exciting, and it’s an odd time to be thinking about regularity (as I did in the previous article), simply because there is none. New friends, new family, and a new norm to be established at some time within the next month. Everything is bright, and sometimes it makes it hard to remember everything simply because everything stood out. Syndrome was right, I guess.
There’s a balance to be had, probably. In retrospect, my undergrad was a tad too regular (and maybe I’m being generous there), but I don’t want to (and don’t think it’s possible for me to) overcorrect too much. Work interspersed with people time, interspersed with menial chores, dedicated time outside my house on the weekends, these are activities and a schedule that will help me delineate things better, and even if at a higher dimension or level it seems regular, the micro view in the moment is that it’s not. I think this is where the spontaneity will live (hopefully), and is something I need to be a bit more intentional about (lol). Saying yes to things, going outside my comfort zone (within the outside-comfort-zone budget, perhaps. Know your limits, folks), and not time-blocking every minute of every day. I still think that spontaneity is, in some ways, formulaic, and a “solvable problem” in the sense that you can plan for it, enable it, etc. (like putting something out of place, so you remember a thing, for example). I now believe that the way in which I do remember to do something “spontaneous” should matter less than whether I do it at all, although I can’t fully dismiss my old perspective.
To meet someone after a long time, or to get to know someone - these are situations in which we inherently do not know or remember everything about them, but the joy in this is that we get to learn about them again, to know them again. I worry about this less, now, especially after having experienced several situations in the last few months that fit this exact description.
For the shows, I still haven’t touched them yet. I watch the new content, like the new A:TLA movie (which was pretty fun), and my memory of the characters and their vibe serves me well there, but I haven’t gone back and rewatched many shows since I wrote my original piece.
What I wrote prior about being loved is being known rings true to me, still, although I’m getting more comfortable with the idea that not everything I do, or not everything that I think is right, or correct, or morally justifiable, is the way others should do things. People are allowed to forget, they are allowed to remember on their own time, they are allowed to be fallible. I had spent so much time describing my own challenges with memory, and how I spent so much time and energy and effort to be able to hold myself to a higher standard than I thought others had… to then expect them to match that, seems a bit inconsiderate. Be clear about your expectations and desires, sure, but allow for grace, I guess.
Section 3: Permanence
This section is rambly.
I still like photography, and I’m now trying to be more intentional about it, insofar as it is now something I’d like to practice, if only at a surface level of aesthetics (perhaps a conversation for another time). I think I’m much more comfortable being in pictures now than I was even two years ago, and it’s because I’ve been able to be slightly less selfish about photos, and who they’re for in any given instant. Taking a picture with my mom isn’t just for me or my mother, but for her parents, my dad, my cousins, family friends, everyone. To share this (presumably lovely) time we’re having with someone else. In addition to being a moment in time we capture, and thus “immortalize” in a way, it allows us to make these feelings and this moment shareable.
For any number of cynical reasons, these are never “really” permanent. We take thousands of photos across lifetimes, and the easier it becomes to take a photo, the harder it becomes to find one and appreciate just that one, amidst a sea of the others. But I guess it makes it easier, and we can hold onto this fleeting notion of permanence for a while longer as we stare through a frame - of a phone screen or a photograph - and gaze at the past.
My Nanu recently gave me a very nice Sailor pen. In reading about the watch my Nanu gave my dad, and now having said nice pen, I think all I have to say is that it’s pretty cool. One of my dreams is to be able to pass something down - even if the memory of me, or my father, or my grandfather fades away, I want this thing (whatever it is) to endure. It’s this endurance that endears me to old edifices, architecture, and the like. When I visited Cambridge for an MLIR Summer School and conference, one of the post-school sessions was a tour of the campus, and while I had been years prior in middle school, it was nice to get a chance to re-up my memory (knock on wood), especially since I’d be living on campus for the week. And boy, is it just fascinating. Peterhouse College at the University of Cambridge was founded in 1284. At time of writing - and we’ll see how long this endures - that is over 700 years old. Think of the great men (and women, although much later) that walked the halls of that college. Think of the cumulative impact of an educational building that’s lived through everything from the Hundred Years War to both Great Wars, and still fucking endures.
I don’t really understand why I’m in awe of these ideas, and to such a degree, although I do know I hadn’t really experienced something of this scale or import before. Our nation was nascent at a time where Cambridge was almost 500 years old, and the University of Bologna was far older than that, and arguably The University of al-Qarawiyyin in 857 is the oldest and longest running educational institution on the planet, even if it wasn’t officially designated a university until 1963.
Someone, over eleven hundred years ago, built a place to collate and share knowledge. Eleven hundred. I am in awe, and I think I may be a bit overzealous about it, but more and more I think about what my impact will be and how my actions will impact others and I want it to be positive, and even if it’s a pipe dream I hope to have some sort of rippling effect on the order of those first scholars who decided to congregate and educate.
I want to be remembered as kind, caring, and intelligent, I think.
The end and beginning, again
The question I originally posed at the end of my first article was
“If I say I like(d) something, but I don’t remember the content, did I ever really”?
In this form, the answer is, I realize, an unambiguous “yes”, because there was a time I really liked it. But I think in the same way that we remember things but are able to recall them less and less as time goes on (without refreshing our memory), I believe we tend to like things less and less in the same way, without re-experiencing them in any form.
Perhaps the main change between me in December of 2024 and me in August of 2026 is that now, I feel as though it’s possible to have some agency or control over what I remember and even maybe to what degree I remember it, at the cost of a lot of time and effort, where before it sort of felt more like an inevitability. A huge part of this has been my being exposed to and consuming blog posts and videos and books and articles showcasing systems of logging, collating, collecting, reusing, organizing, and so on.
Maybe two years down the line, the next iteration of this blog post will be more about my memory systems, whether these new things of mine will help me remember, or be something else that falls to the wayside.
I hope you enjoyed, -- Arjun