Imperfect your memories

Sunday, February 26, 2023

You could write a long essay unpacking the many implied layers of this phrase, “easily perfect all of your memories,” but I really want to bring up something that my friend the photographer Clayton Cubitt taught me: whatever you think is boring or ugly in your photograph today might quite possibly be the most interesting thing about the photograph in the future.

Knowing this, I am inclined to go the other direction and do my best to imperfect my memories: leave in all the things I’m supposed to crop out. (This is why I leave in all the dumb, mundane crap I do every day in my logbook: what I have for lunch, meetings, what I watched on TV, etc.)

I try to remember that I have no idea today exactly what I’ll want to remember about today in the future.

Drawing to remember

Tuesday, December 15, 2020

“Harlan Pepper, if you don’t stop naming nuts…”

I was putting together a climbing dome for my kids out in the yard a few days ago (it’s December in Texas, you can still get a sunburn outside) and there were two kinds of nuts I had to distinguish between, and I thought, “How many damned kinds of nuts are there, anyways?” Many, it turns out, so I drew a bunch of them in my diary. Now I can name nuts like Harlan Pepper.

I copied those nuts from a diagram I found on the internet, much like I copied this timeline of composers a few years ago. It’s not enough, for me, to just print out a diagram and paste it in my diary. I need to copy it by hand, slowly, to really look at it and let the information sink in. Copying is how I learn, it’s a way to understand what’s really going on, and drawing is a way of slowing down long enough to really look at something. (It’s like I said in Keep Going: “Slow down and draw things out.”)

Here’s a drawing I made when I was trying to understand the moon phases. I thought I had it figured out, until I was playing with the Sundial app on my phone and realized that, duh, when the moon is full, it’s got the full sun shining on it from the other side of the earth, so lunar noon, when it’s at its peak, is at the opposite time of day from solar noon. (I think?) Again, drawing helped me understand:

If you draw something, no matter how mundane the subject, no matter how badly, you really look at the thing, and therefore, you remember it better.

If you want to remember something, try drawing it.

Time as a filter

Sunday, April 1, 2018

On March 24, 1857, Thoreau journaled about memory, and how the passing of time serves as a filter for what is good or interesting:

If you are describing any occurrence, or a man, make two or more distinct reports at different times. Though you may think you have said all, you will to-morrow remember a whole new class of facts which perhaps interested most of all at the time, but did not present themselves to be reported.

On March 27, three days later, true to the topic, he polished his thoughts on the subject:

I would fain make two reports in my Journal, first the incidents and observations of to-day; and by to-morrow I review the same and record what was omitted before, which will often be the most significant and poetic part. I do not know at first what it is that charms me. The men and things of to-day are wont to lie fairer and truer in to-morrow’s memory.

Above: Thoreau’s drawing of geese in formation, March 28, 1859

Afterlives

Tuesday, October 3, 2017

There are two afterlives from David Eagleman’s wonderful book, Sum: 40 Tales From The Afterlives, that I think of often:

The first is the one in the title story, “Sum,” in which you “relive all your experiences, but this time, with the events re-shuffled into a new order,” and “all the moments which share a quality are grouped together.” So you sleep for 30 years, sit on the toilet for 5 years, have sex for 7 months, experience pain for 27 hours, etc. That story is a reminder that “a life where episodes are split into tiny swallowable pieces” is a well-designed and endurable one.

The second is the afterlife in “Metamorphosis,” a limbo-esque lobby the dead wait in until every single person on Earth has ceased to remember them. It starts this way: “There are three deaths: the first is when the body ceases to function. The second is when the body is consigned to the grave. The third is that moment, sometime in the future, when your name is spoken for the last time.”

I think of these three deaths whenever a loved one dies. Their first and second death has passed, but their third and final death has not, and the absolute earliest it will is at the moment my brain forgets their name. So, until my own first death, I keep them alive. This is easiest for my favorite musicians: Put on their record, and their voice fills the room.

FORGOTTEN ARTIFACTS AND INSPIRATIONS

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Memory is a funny thing—you think the things you digest and then consciously cast away are forgotten forever—but they’re not. They’re stewing in the pools deep in your subconscious…making your every move..

My mom still lives in the house I grew up in, so when I’m home for the holidays, I often poke around my room and sift through nostalgia from my childhood.

Having just finished the book, I thought it was no coincidence that I found the following artifacts….

* * *

The Smoking Gun book

When I started making blackout poems, I was ignorant of Tom Phillips’ A Humument or found poetry—I was thinking about John Lennon’s FBI files and the de-classified documents on the Smoking Gun website: the way magic-marker-redacted and photocopied documents turn to pure black and white. But I had totally forgotten about this book, which I purchased in high school:

* * *

Green Day’s Nimrod liner notes

My stepmom actually found this left in a dresser drawer at my dad’s house. 1997—I was 14. It wouldn’t be the first time Green Day album art influenced me…

* * *

Tristan Tzara’s “How To Make A Dadaist Poem“

This one truly shocked me. I include Tzara’s manifesto in the book, but I found it only after reading William Burroughs’ The Third Mind. Turns out I’d read it in high school, and even tried out the cut-up method for one of my high school english classes. (Please: no wisecracks about the embarrassing writing and the use of the word “society”.)