jayward33.blog-city.com
MEMOIR
posted Friday, 18 July 2008
first of the day
Zzzzzzzzz!
Adjusting the exposure
Are we there yet?
Local walking his dog.
MEMOIR
I'm currently re reading GRANTA 58 Ambition from summer 1997 and there is an editorial lead about Memoirs. It got me to thinking about writing and stories in general.
How reliable is memory? Most of my life is a blur and the daily thought I put in my hand written journal is how I felt at that instant and even that is not a reliable rendition of the reality as it existed. Did I really see what I saw? My photographs are mere instants framed and controlled by the camera and the impulse to press the shutter. What you see is not necessarily what you get. There is no sound track on my photos and mostly we are talking to ourselves.
For instance, what would I remember about today? The bum sleeping on the street, the police woman talking to a friend while the tramp in the background steals the condiments off the other counter which I didn't notice myself until I processed the photo. The time on the steam clock or the local walking his dog, just what would I write about?
Perhaps, I would write about my first remembered memory. Do you really have any memory before you have language? This one sticks in my head and I don't really know if it was my memory or my Mother's tales of that memory which has stuck in my mind.
I was confined to my mother's bed suffering from some childhood malady. Mom had one of those old fashioned dressing tables with a large mirror about four feet from the bed. I remember seeing it and wondering who the little boy was that imitated everything I did. He smiled when I did, he frowned when I did, he looked away when I did. I talked to him and although his mouth moved at the same time as mine I could only hear my own voice.
I got out of the bed to inspect this a little closer and reached out and touched the mirror and discovered there was something hard and shiny between me and the boy on the other side. Then I had the thought to look behind the mirror but there was nothing there except the wall. I thought this must be part of the game and looked back into the mirror while I felt behind the mirror with my hand.
Just then my Mom came into the room and suddenly I had two Mom's in the room. How could that happen and who was the little boy with her? My Mom had a chuckle and then explained to me that I was seeing a reflection and the reflection of the other little boy was me.
Now that memory does not have my brother in existence and I estimate that
Mom was three months pregnant with bother Bob which would make me about two years old. Now was this my memory or the stories from my Mom's memory?
Who knows, another memory is conjured up whenever I smell whiskey and cigarettes and an instant memory of my Grand Dad flashes across my mind.
So most memoirs are suspect as we know from the wildly divergent testimony of eye witness accounts in our courts of law. So memoirs are not the absolute truth except to the person writing them and their ability to tell a convincing story.
La Dolce Vita!
Ciao, JWL
I'm currently re reading GRANTA 58 Ambition from summer 1997 and there is an editorial lead about Memoirs. It got me to thinking about writing and stories in general.
How reliable is memory? Most of my life is a blur and the daily thought I put in my hand written journal is how I felt at that instant and even that is not a reliable rendition of the reality as it existed. Did I really see what I saw? My photographs are mere instants framed and controlled by the camera and the impulse to press the shutter. What you see is not necessarily what you get. There is no sound track on my photos and mostly we are talking to ourselves.
For instance, what would I remember about today? The bum sleeping on the street, the police woman talking to a friend while the tramp in the background steals the condiments off the other counter which I didn't notice myself until I processed the photo. The time on the steam clock or the local walking his dog, just what would I write about?
Perhaps, I would write about my first remembered memory. Do you really have any memory before you have language? This one sticks in my head and I don't really know if it was my memory or my Mother's tales of that memory which has stuck in my mind.
I was confined to my mother's bed suffering from some childhood malady. Mom had one of those old fashioned dressing tables with a large mirror about four feet from the bed. I remember seeing it and wondering who the little boy was that imitated everything I did. He smiled when I did, he frowned when I did, he looked away when I did. I talked to him and although his mouth moved at the same time as mine I could only hear my own voice.
I got out of the bed to inspect this a little closer and reached out and touched the mirror and discovered there was something hard and shiny between me and the boy on the other side. Then I had the thought to look behind the mirror but there was nothing there except the wall. I thought this must be part of the game and looked back into the mirror while I felt behind the mirror with my hand.
Just then my Mom came into the room and suddenly I had two Mom's in the room. How could that happen and who was the little boy with her? My Mom had a chuckle and then explained to me that I was seeing a reflection and the reflection of the other little boy was me.
Now that memory does not have my brother in existence and I estimate that
Mom was three months pregnant with bother Bob which would make me about two years old. Now was this my memory or the stories from my Mom's memory?
Who knows, another memory is conjured up whenever I smell whiskey and cigarettes and an instant memory of my Grand Dad flashes across my mind.
So most memoirs are suspect as we know from the wildly divergent testimony of eye witness accounts in our courts of law. So memoirs are not the absolute truth except to the person writing them and their ability to tell a convincing story.
La Dolce Vita!
Ciao, JWL
JWL
copyright 18/07/2008
all rights reserved
Talk to me (1)
1. Paula Reed left...
Friday, 18 July 2008 6:14 pm :: http://paulareed.blog-city.com
Funny thing, memory, and funny how we use all these other reference points
to place them in their proper context. Of course, by your photos, you are
a master at perspective.