recuerdos y ideas

I wrote this for scammell's most recent piece, about memory. i'm not sure it'll make it into the final piece, but after about a month of reflection, i still kind of like what i said.

as something of an anthropologist i feel like i should frame memory in some sort of anthropological theory. of course, this is in no way indicative of anthropology as a whole, but i think memory is very intimately connected to ideas of truth and history. we are all who we are because of what we've experienced. we have these experiences and we try to break them up into digestible, understandable pieces. we chop experience up into memories in order to endow them with meaning. this is the moment i realized something, or this happened, or this experience is why i feel this way. but in reality, experience is just a long run on sentence of occurrances. and much like history, they depend entirely on perception. there is no single truth. there are as many truths as people who witness or live through an event. and yet, some truths are valued over others. they are reproduced and written down, and thus become fact, "official history." I think we do similar things with memories. We have a vast amount of experience from which to draw, but we choose certain memories from which to make meaning. these memories are a key part of the construction of our identities. they tell us who we were, and thus who we are. we make ourselves through our memories.

i've also been thinking about attraction a lot lately, too, and i think in a way its related. in fact, i think attraction may be the converse of memory in some ways. i have come to the conclusion that (and maybe this is cynical, but that would be rather in line with my usual musings on relationships) we are all attracted to people based on the idea of them. we attribute meaning before the substance, and sometimes forget that's the case.

its the idea that attracts us. the idea of that brooding filmmaker, or that silly footballer. and i think it matters very little how well we know the person. even if the object of attraction is an old friend, someone with whom we collaborate or create, even if we've witnessed them in other relationships or had our own previous relationships with them, its still the idea that attracts us initially. the idea of the good friend that becomes the lover. the idea of carrying over what we have into something else. the idea of the past relationship becoming renewed. we apply cultural narratives to our unique situations to make them meaningful. maybe epic.

perhaps more obviously, even if we've only known the person for a few moments, or simply seen them across a room. the attraction is the idea of them. we make assumptions based on our visual perceptions. As Celia Lury has written, vision and knowledge have become inextricably intertwined in modern Euro-American societies (1998:2). We make assumptions based on the visual. Certain clothing represents interests or values, glasses translate to intelligence, dreadlocks translate to particular recreational practices, a hoodie with 15 mini-buttons translates to some sort of leftist, anti-consumerist, possibly anarchist political position. And because, for the most part, we're using a common script, or what Eco calls “successive transcriptions” (1992:3) the translation is often close to what was intended by the performer. so, this is to say that often the idea of the person is not so far from the reality.

However, the idea is simply the iconic permutation of the real person. Certain aspects of identity may be highlighted while others are ignored or downplayed. And this happens on both ends, the attractor and the attracted. Or perhaps it's aspects of the affair itself that are highlighted or downplayed. Its scandalous nature highlighted, the mundane interactions downplayed. Or the comfort level highlighted, the misunderstandings downplayed.

But this is not to say that attraction is meaningless. Its what happens after the attraction that counts. Its what's built on top of the attraction that lasts. Because eventually (maybe it takes 30 seconds, maybe 4 years) the idea of this person, this encounter or relationship melts away to reveal the truth beneath it. That charasmatic artist becomes a real human with talent, but confidence issues, or the young ambitious politician transforms into a someone too absorbed with the state of affairs in the world, and not absorbed enough with you. But if you're lucky, that quirky bass player slowly transforms into a complex personality that is compatible, comfortable, and real. complete with faults and failings, but with just the right combination of smirks, jokes, surprises, and awkward talks about the future to make you realize its not just the idea of it anymore. there's real substance.

but only if you're lucky.