Can you trust memory to tell you the truth?
November 16th 2008 00:35
I started keeping a journal from the age of sixteen, a kind of confessional about how crap it was to be in love with a boy who didn’t even know I existed, and how gross I looked in culottes or leg-warmers or whatever other fashion-item seemed to be in vogue at the time. As I progressed in emotional vocabulary and experience, my journals became more of a friendly place in which to ponder the big questions about life such as ‘is it strictly speaking infidelity to kiss someone else while dating another man?’ and if not, would having an erotic dream about him also count as infidelity?’
My journals became an integral part of my daily routine – just as some people pray, or drink, or wank before falling asleep, so I wrote in my journal. ‘This is how my day has been, these are my hopes, my loves, my deepest neuroses.’ I spoke to God directly in those pages, detailing what I found charming, inspirational and unacceptable about the world around me.
I once caught a boyfriend of mine reading my journal and knew in that moment he was a slimy two-timer, who could say one thing and do another. I was, of course, in time proved entirely right about this.
Then I had lovers who took my journaling as a sacred meditation, and in these men I saw greatness.
Over the past year, I’ve been working on a spiritual memoir and as a result, I've been trawling through the small encyclopedias of my journaling history. It is both eerie to be an omniscient reader of a history that has passed, and to read back on the great unanswered questions of my life, some of which have been answered by the unfolding of time. But it is most startling to read about people I refer to only by first names or events I describe in detail and to have absolutely no recollection of those people or moments in my life. Who was that person who hurt me so much? What concert was it where Bruce so-and-so tried to undo my bra? Did I let him?
Anyone who has ever been cross-examined in court or tried to retrace their steps having lost their car keys will know that memory is untrustworthy. Yet we think of memory as the lynchpin of our identity, the Uluru of our internal landscape. But I have come to see that it is not solid and fixed like rock, but fluid and dynamic, like ocean. Memory is a concept, not a cache. It is the capacity to remember that makes us human, not the reliability of what it is we do remember. Speak to three different siblings from the same family about an important moment in the family and you will get three different renderings about ‘what happened.’ We each remember like we each love – uniquely, according to the shape of our shifting selves.
While this instability makes factual biography difficult (and raises the postmodern concern about the very nature of ‘objectivity’), it is this very moody quality of memory that appeals to me as a writer. Truth is variable, even within our own histories. So much of my own past has leaked through the holes in my memory, dripped onto the pages of my journals, telling me what ‘happened.’
I read my stories with curiosity, wondering how things ended.
www.joannefedler.com
My journals became an integral part of my daily routine – just as some people pray, or drink, or wank before falling asleep, so I wrote in my journal. ‘This is how my day has been, these are my hopes, my loves, my deepest neuroses.’ I spoke to God directly in those pages, detailing what I found charming, inspirational and unacceptable about the world around me.
I once caught a boyfriend of mine reading my journal and knew in that moment he was a slimy two-timer, who could say one thing and do another. I was, of course, in time proved entirely right about this.
Then I had lovers who took my journaling as a sacred meditation, and in these men I saw greatness.
Over the past year, I’ve been working on a spiritual memoir and as a result, I've been trawling through the small encyclopedias of my journaling history. It is both eerie to be an omniscient reader of a history that has passed, and to read back on the great unanswered questions of my life, some of which have been answered by the unfolding of time. But it is most startling to read about people I refer to only by first names or events I describe in detail and to have absolutely no recollection of those people or moments in my life. Who was that person who hurt me so much? What concert was it where Bruce so-and-so tried to undo my bra? Did I let him?
Anyone who has ever been cross-examined in court or tried to retrace their steps having lost their car keys will know that memory is untrustworthy. Yet we think of memory as the lynchpin of our identity, the Uluru of our internal landscape. But I have come to see that it is not solid and fixed like rock, but fluid and dynamic, like ocean. Memory is a concept, not a cache. It is the capacity to remember that makes us human, not the reliability of what it is we do remember. Speak to three different siblings from the same family about an important moment in the family and you will get three different renderings about ‘what happened.’ We each remember like we each love – uniquely, according to the shape of our shifting selves.
While this instability makes factual biography difficult (and raises the postmodern concern about the very nature of ‘objectivity’), it is this very moody quality of memory that appeals to me as a writer. Truth is variable, even within our own histories. So much of my own past has leaked through the holes in my memory, dripped onto the pages of my journals, telling me what ‘happened.’
I read my stories with curiosity, wondering how things ended.
www.joannefedler.com
| 85 |
| Vote |
Shared on
Subscribe to this blog
Comment by Lady Henrietta Muddling
Potter in a Harry
This is a really interesting topic in relation to the creative writing process.
I remember my writing teacher saying in class one day, 'Write from memory. Don't revisit the places you are writing about, because you'll find they're so different to how they are in your memory.'
What he was getting at was that our memories trigger certain responses, and if they trigger certain responses in our own minds, trust them when you write that they will trigger similar responses in your readers' minds.
At the time, his advice made sense to me, so I followed it.
I didn't think a lot about it or try to prove or disprove this theory of his. I generally accepted what he said on the creative writing process.
Anyway. Just before my first novel was published, I returned to my home district and went to a beach that featured in the novel. It was nothing like I'd described it. In fact it was nothing like I remember it either. But I was tapping into the essence of the beach and what it meant to me at the time, and remembering what it meant to me at that time, long afterwards.
I'm in danger here of going into a diatribe of how fiction should capture the essence of things rather than just document the reality of them, for that belongs to writing non-fiction. I'll leave that alone for a second, for it's another subject in itself.
Perhaps the best way to describe how this works is to look at the world through a mother's eyes. Her child will always be her child, even when he/she is old. Her memory (or interior eyes) produces images of her child as a child. Her exterior eyes produce images of how her child is now an adult. Yet her child will always be her child. Her memories will always say that this adult before her is one and the same child she once cradled in her arms as a baby.
If that makes no sense at all? It's 11.29am here. (If that makes no sense at all? It wasn't meant to).
Comment by Chris Champion
moneywhither
Vyoos
Zoomies
Bloggercises
NewlyOld
The Blog of Lists
Comment by Joanne Fedler
Secret Writers Business
Chris, some of my journals entries are so eloquent I don't recognize the person who wrote them. And some so embarassingly inarticulate I wish I'd burned them. Do you go back and reread yours and if so, do you also find yourself surprised by things you would never have remembered had you not written them down?
Jo
Comment by Jayne Kearney
Writers In Writing (and other writing)
Another insightful post. I, too, kept rather tortured journals as a teenager and they were sacred documents to me.
I also kept a journal as an adult and had the same experience as you with a boyfriend (very EX!!) reading what I wrote and feeling he had a direct line to my soul. He ended up being nothing more than a complete prick who twisted the inner thoughts he had stolen from me and chipped away at my sense of self. He too was 'slimy'. When I finally got rid of him it took me a long time to feel safe about writing my innermost thoughts.
As to memory - I have only just started to accept that my own memory is not the airtight time capsule I once thought it was. Your comment:
"Speak to three different siblings from the same family about an important moment in the family and you will get three different renderings about ‘what happened.’ We each remember like we each love – uniquely, according to the shape of our shifting selves."
is exactly how I have come to realise the very fluidity of memory that you speak about. As one of five children it is amazing how differently we each remember the exact same events. I love the idea of memory as a postmodern concept -there is no reality, only versions of it. I think as writers (to echo LHM) our aim is to render one of these versions in a way which resonates with an audience.
Another thought-provoking post.
PS - will we have the pleasure of reading your 'spiritual memoir' one day?
Jayne
Comment by Kleonaptra
Kalikapsychosis
And no, memory cannot ever be counted on, but as we have all mentioned, thats not the point. Its the emotion and the sense of the scene/act/place more than the reality....
Comment by Mrs M
Mum's Word
Love & stuff
Mrs M