I wish I had a Polaroid ...
So I could remember - Shwayze
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| Memories get blurry after a while. Do you remember who you spent this day with? I do, because it was only last weekend when we jumped into the April-cold Belgian sea together |
So this is something was occupied with in Uni a while ago (in my cultural studies lesson). But since then, it hasn't left my mind completely. It keeps spinning round and round and I'm still trying to figure out why it concerns me this much.
Remembering. And, inseperably connected to it, Forgetting.
I reflected on changing in the past. And changing goes along with creating different versions of yourself. The past-version of you is different from yourself today. If not superficially, I'm sure, under your skin. We learn, we evolve, we grow, we make mistakes and so we alter our habits, interests, lovers, opinions, friends and lived spaces.
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| Nights out. Getting french fries at 3 am. But what did we laugh about again...? |
In a round of friends we discussed past-versions of ourselves in a bar. One said she used to be a total punk when she was younger, wearing ripped gloves and studded belts and she even had dyed her hair neon pink at the time.
Another one told us about a wild phase of hers when she was desperately (but successfully) trying to get into night clubs even though she was underaged. Except the one time she and her friend got caught by the police and she recalled how frightened she was back then.
We wouldn't know and we couldn't tell these stories, if we weren't able to remember them. I read that (following recent research, but not for sure though) the amount of data our brain can store equals 2500 hard drives of 1 terabyte. That means you could remember three million hours of TV shows and maybe there would be still space left to fill up in your brain.
But still, all day long we perceive millions and millions of things, we see a lot of strange faces (if we decide to leave Netflix alone for a minute and actually leave the house - I know... absurd). I read (but I don't remember where...badum tss) that all the people who play roles in our dreams are real or parts of real people we have once encountered. Even though our consciousness can't remember them, unconsciously, a catalog of faces is stored in our mind and re-used to fill up random characters in our dream world. How crazy is this???
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| A picture I took when I visited my brother the last time. How does his face look again? (I'm kidding) |
The point I wanted to make is that we are not only able to conserve a ton of things, thoughts, places, feelings - but there are at least another ton of things a day that we immediately (or after a short while) forget. Mostly things that our brain sorts out as "not important" or "irrelevant" for our life. That's why it is so hard to recall what you had for lunch on Tuesday, two weeks ago.
And why you may better remember that big fight with your brother you had on the exact same day. Memories that are connected to strong emotions, such as anger, are more likely to be categorized as "relevant" by our brain.
Sometimes our brain works in mysterious ways. What we keep can seem random. For example, I am very good at remembering song lyrics and exact lines from comedians or youtubers I enjoy watching... Pretty random - But who knows maybe someday this will save my life...? Well, rather unlikely.
What we lose is terrible. Maybe we wanted to keep it - beloved childhood memories, nice days with friends and family or things you did with your boyfriend. But hey, it's gone. At least I don't remember having a good time with him. Do you?
Sometimes our brain works in mysterious ways. What we keep can seem random. For example, I am very good at remembering song lyrics and exact lines from comedians or youtubers I enjoy watching... Pretty random - But who knows maybe someday this will save my life...? Well, rather unlikely.
What we lose is terrible. Maybe we wanted to keep it - beloved childhood memories, nice days with friends and family or things you did with your boyfriend. But hey, it's gone. At least I don't remember having a good time with him. Do you?
Remember cuddles in the kitchen,
yeah, to get things off the ground...?
It was up, up and away - Arctic Monkeys
No, for real: I am afraid of losing my memories. It is losing a part of yourself at the same time.
What am I when I have no memories? I can't tell my story. I don't have a story anymore. I'm so sad and sorry for Alzheimer's patients. I am afraid of getting the disease. I don't want to forget. Noone wants to. Not being able to recall your own child's features. Imagine, your mom doesn't know who you are anymore. Just imagine.
Another fear of mine is that my memories aren't real. It's scientifically proven that we alter our memories everytime we bring them to our minds again. Which means that our favourite, most beloved memories are the most fake of them all.
So what are they, in the end? Memories are such blurry, unstable, unclear thoughts, emotions, they are partly or completely changed fragments of our past.
What do we do with them? - We build on them, we base our identity on them. We live and decide in ways that "experience told us". We trust them blindly. We cry over them. Constructs of our minds leading us.
But in a different way, they are not solid, always changeable, always adjustable for now and the new actuality. The same story, concluded by a different moral. Or different way of telling it. It's fascinating. It's frightening. Is anything of it real?
In the movie of "Divergent" (I'm sure you know it, don't you?) it is possible to view the dreams of the protagonist on screen. That's utopic for us today (Or dystopic?).
But I am quite convinced that we will be able to do this in reality in the future. Will we be able to see our memories, too? Like literally seeing them on screen, letting other people be part of it like they are watching a movie? Whaaat?!
We would be able to compare memories of different people of the same incident. We would realize why they are so sure about what "really happened" - each one telling a different version of the story. Awesome!
But in some way, it would be creepy and unpleasant, too. Because, like our dreams and inner thoughts (as long as we don't brag about them on the internet, like I love to do), our memories are private. They are some of the most intimate things. Some of them are even secrets.
There are others we love to share, of course: Funny things that happened, good news, wedding plans, a good book we read last week... But some are restricted. Some may never be told at all. Not forgotten till the end - but not told to anyone EVER. How would we react if there were people that were able to show these memories on screen? Maybe using them against our will and against us?
Away from this dystopic, controled(-by-evil-leaders), futuristic world!
Back to my memories. I remember a line on the receipt of a bar in Paris. The bar was rather shitty. It tried to hard to be an Irish Pub and showed a lot of soccer and Rugby matches on badly placed TVs. The drinks were too pricy and the seats uncomfortably high set.
But on the receipt it said the name of the bar and after it "Easy to find - hard to forget". In a way, this saying was ironic. In a way, I thought, in a sudden semblance of melancholy: This is what I want to be for other people. Or maybe this is already the case.
Thought of my ex boyfriend. Thought of people I don't know anymore who were close friends 10 years ago. Thought of how many people I had forgotten. Thought of all the people who met me once and had already forgotten me.
But mostly I thought about the people who will remember me.
What am I when I have no memories? I can't tell my story. I don't have a story anymore. I'm so sad and sorry for Alzheimer's patients. I am afraid of getting the disease. I don't want to forget. Noone wants to. Not being able to recall your own child's features. Imagine, your mom doesn't know who you are anymore. Just imagine.
Another fear of mine is that my memories aren't real. It's scientifically proven that we alter our memories everytime we bring them to our minds again. Which means that our favourite, most beloved memories are the most fake of them all.
So what are they, in the end? Memories are such blurry, unstable, unclear thoughts, emotions, they are partly or completely changed fragments of our past.
What do we do with them? - We build on them, we base our identity on them. We live and decide in ways that "experience told us". We trust them blindly. We cry over them. Constructs of our minds leading us.
But in a different way, they are not solid, always changeable, always adjustable for now and the new actuality. The same story, concluded by a different moral. Or different way of telling it. It's fascinating. It's frightening. Is anything of it real?
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| Hey, remember last summer when we decided to make "Guerilla Street Art" for one night? |
But I am quite convinced that we will be able to do this in reality in the future. Will we be able to see our memories, too? Like literally seeing them on screen, letting other people be part of it like they are watching a movie? Whaaat?!
We would be able to compare memories of different people of the same incident. We would realize why they are so sure about what "really happened" - each one telling a different version of the story. Awesome!
But in some way, it would be creepy and unpleasant, too. Because, like our dreams and inner thoughts (as long as we don't brag about them on the internet, like I love to do), our memories are private. They are some of the most intimate things. Some of them are even secrets.
There are others we love to share, of course: Funny things that happened, good news, wedding plans, a good book we read last week... But some are restricted. Some may never be told at all. Not forgotten till the end - but not told to anyone EVER. How would we react if there were people that were able to show these memories on screen? Maybe using them against our will and against us?
Away from this dystopic, controled(-by-evil-leaders), futuristic world!
Back to my memories. I remember a line on the receipt of a bar in Paris. The bar was rather shitty. It tried to hard to be an Irish Pub and showed a lot of soccer and Rugby matches on badly placed TVs. The drinks were too pricy and the seats uncomfortably high set.
But on the receipt it said the name of the bar and after it "Easy to find - hard to forget". In a way, this saying was ironic. In a way, I thought, in a sudden semblance of melancholy: This is what I want to be for other people. Or maybe this is already the case.
Thought of my ex boyfriend. Thought of people I don't know anymore who were close friends 10 years ago. Thought of how many people I had forgotten. Thought of all the people who met me once and had already forgotten me.
But mostly I thought about the people who will remember me.
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| "I could die right now, Clem. I'm just... happy. I've never felt that before. I'm just exactly where I want to be." (katarinavelika.files.wordpress.com) |
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