Memento
This thought occurred to me the other day, as I was snaking along a mountain highway through unexpected afternoon fog, having just dropped my children off with their dad for the holiday: Maybe other people don’t think the same things I do or, at least, think the same way I do.
That was a revelation.
I had this thought, because I drive this same circuitous mountain route several times a year, either dropping my kids off or picking them up. While my children are in the car with me, we are usually talking or else they are listening to dreadful heavy metal/alternative rock music either on their iPods or my car stereo. On the half of the trip where they are not with me, though, I listen to books on CD, because radio reception in the mountains is very unreliable and I like to listen to something intriguing, in an attempt to stay awake.
I have driven this same route dozens of times over the past five years, and I have listened to quite a few audio books, some fiction, some non-fiction.
The result of this is that as I round a particular bend or pass a particular town or road sign, I am invariably reminded of a particular passage from a book on CD that I happened to be listening to at that point on a previous trip. This in turn reminds me of the whole book and this makes me think of all sorts of things: other books by the same author, other similar books, things that were going on in my life at that time, things that were going on in the world at that time, things that have no relation to either that book or that time. But that initial memory is a trigger all the same. It is a visual trigger that sets an audio memory in action that sets a whole string of weird thought sequences into gear. And makes for very interesting drives indeed!
Songs do this to me, too. When I drive to work, I occasionally listen to a radio station that plays what they call “The Nine at Nine.” They pick a year between the 70s and now and play top hits from that year, usually from that day. Invariably, certain songs bring all sorts of memories whooshing back to me: from middle school, high school, college, the Army, young adult life, what have you. Often I have not heard many of these songs since the time they were giant hits, and I am surprised by how effectively they can trigger memories from my past.
Smells can do this, too. Especially if they are smells I have not experienced in a while and they are associated with powerful events in my life. Black shoe polish would be one of these smells. Whenever I smell black shoe polish, which would not be very often, I am instantaneously transported back to West Point and often Beast Barracks, where that smell first entered my olfactory senses. Black shoe polish, of course, represents all those hours I spent spit shining my shoes and combat boots. And all of the weird methods we would try as plebes to try to get our shoes to shine even better for the upper classmen who inspected us, whether formally in formation or whimsically as we passed them in the hallways.
I cannot imagine that I am all that different from anyone else. Don’t these visual, audio, and olfactory cues stimulate memories in all of us? Sure, different cues stimulate different memories in different people, but that feeling of suddenly being whisked back in time is unmistakable. In splashes, smatterings, even entire scenarios.
Wow! I hadn’t thought of that in years.
Gosh, I haven’t heard that song since it first came out. And with good reason….
Gee, I had forgotten that. The memory was so sudden, so fresh, so vivid. How could I ever have forgotten that?
When I was a little kid, I had this theory that all of our memories are stored in filing cabinets up in our brains. Only as we get older the rooms up there get over-crowded with filing cabinets and it is impossible to keep track of all those files, all those memories. Yet, if something leads us to a particular cabinet, a particular drawer, a particular file, that memory is still there, for us to remember, to enjoy, or to suffer through. I used to think that everything we ever saw, heard, smelled, tasted, said, or felt was stored up there in our brain somewhere, but that it was just too much for our brains to keep a manageable grip on everything. So, we tended to be selective in what we remembered, at least on a daily basis. And how many of our memories, especially as we get older, are really memories of memories and not memories at all? Yet, is there something like a sight, a smell, a sound, a hypnotist’s trance that can transport us back to any or all memories that are stored up there? Can we remember a lot more than we think we can? Or are memories actually lost?
Why do we remember an event in one way and someone else remembers it in a different way? Why do we not remember a particular event, but a close relative or friend who was there with us does remember it? And when they speak about it, we sometimes remember it, thinking: wow! I haven’t thought of that in years!
Or else, we think, gee, I seriously do NOT remember that at all. And secretly wonder if it is true.
That was a revelation.
I had this thought, because I drive this same circuitous mountain route several times a year, either dropping my kids off or picking them up. While my children are in the car with me, we are usually talking or else they are listening to dreadful heavy metal/alternative rock music either on their iPods or my car stereo. On the half of the trip where they are not with me, though, I listen to books on CD, because radio reception in the mountains is very unreliable and I like to listen to something intriguing, in an attempt to stay awake.
I have driven this same route dozens of times over the past five years, and I have listened to quite a few audio books, some fiction, some non-fiction.
The result of this is that as I round a particular bend or pass a particular town or road sign, I am invariably reminded of a particular passage from a book on CD that I happened to be listening to at that point on a previous trip. This in turn reminds me of the whole book and this makes me think of all sorts of things: other books by the same author, other similar books, things that were going on in my life at that time, things that were going on in the world at that time, things that have no relation to either that book or that time. But that initial memory is a trigger all the same. It is a visual trigger that sets an audio memory in action that sets a whole string of weird thought sequences into gear. And makes for very interesting drives indeed!
Songs do this to me, too. When I drive to work, I occasionally listen to a radio station that plays what they call “The Nine at Nine.” They pick a year between the 70s and now and play top hits from that year, usually from that day. Invariably, certain songs bring all sorts of memories whooshing back to me: from middle school, high school, college, the Army, young adult life, what have you. Often I have not heard many of these songs since the time they were giant hits, and I am surprised by how effectively they can trigger memories from my past.
Smells can do this, too. Especially if they are smells I have not experienced in a while and they are associated with powerful events in my life. Black shoe polish would be one of these smells. Whenever I smell black shoe polish, which would not be very often, I am instantaneously transported back to West Point and often Beast Barracks, where that smell first entered my olfactory senses. Black shoe polish, of course, represents all those hours I spent spit shining my shoes and combat boots. And all of the weird methods we would try as plebes to try to get our shoes to shine even better for the upper classmen who inspected us, whether formally in formation or whimsically as we passed them in the hallways.
I cannot imagine that I am all that different from anyone else. Don’t these visual, audio, and olfactory cues stimulate memories in all of us? Sure, different cues stimulate different memories in different people, but that feeling of suddenly being whisked back in time is unmistakable. In splashes, smatterings, even entire scenarios.
Wow! I hadn’t thought of that in years.
Gosh, I haven’t heard that song since it first came out. And with good reason….
Gee, I had forgotten that. The memory was so sudden, so fresh, so vivid. How could I ever have forgotten that?
When I was a little kid, I had this theory that all of our memories are stored in filing cabinets up in our brains. Only as we get older the rooms up there get over-crowded with filing cabinets and it is impossible to keep track of all those files, all those memories. Yet, if something leads us to a particular cabinet, a particular drawer, a particular file, that memory is still there, for us to remember, to enjoy, or to suffer through. I used to think that everything we ever saw, heard, smelled, tasted, said, or felt was stored up there in our brain somewhere, but that it was just too much for our brains to keep a manageable grip on everything. So, we tended to be selective in what we remembered, at least on a daily basis. And how many of our memories, especially as we get older, are really memories of memories and not memories at all? Yet, is there something like a sight, a smell, a sound, a hypnotist’s trance that can transport us back to any or all memories that are stored up there? Can we remember a lot more than we think we can? Or are memories actually lost?
Why do we remember an event in one way and someone else remembers it in a different way? Why do we not remember a particular event, but a close relative or friend who was there with us does remember it? And when they speak about it, we sometimes remember it, thinking: wow! I haven’t thought of that in years!
Or else, we think, gee, I seriously do NOT remember that at all. And secretly wonder if it is true.
posted by delta at 3:27 PM
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