Brain Food #729
Narrating the story of ourselves
Thoughts of the day
Having a partner in discourse may be one of the most important relationships of your life. Ideas are meant to be shared, but also exchanged, discussed, and reformed. And perhaps more simply, sharing our memories with someone helps in remembering them.
Recall in memory is the mental process of retrieving information from the past, often without relying on contextual prompts. It is one of the three core processes of memory.
Andy Warhol called his friend Pat Hackett every morning for eleven years, between 1976 and his death on February 22, 1987, to perform an act they called “doing the diary.” Warhol would recall the events of the previous day, they would discuss them, and Hackett would take notes. These notes would eventually be edited and published with Hackett’s help as Warhol’s diaries.
The act of recall can be a powerful one, but even more so when done with another person. And the recall partner does not have to be a person; the mere act of writing it all down (something Warhol could have, admittedly, done himself), literally doing the diary while narrating the story of ourselves, can suffice, even if some memories may not seem significant enough to keep.
“You know what I think?" she says. "That people's memories are maybe the fuel they burn to stay alive. Whether those memories have any actual importance or not, it doesn't matter as far as the maintenance of life is concerned. They're all just fuel. Advertising fillers in the newspaper, philosophy books, dirty pictures in a magazine, a bundle of ten-thousand-yen bills: when you feed 'em to the fire, they're all just paper. The fire isn't thinking 'Oh, this is Kant,' or 'Oh, this is the Yomiuri evening edition,' or 'Nice tits,' while it burns. To the fire, they're nothing but scraps of paper. It's the exact same thing. Important memories, not-so-important memories, totally useless memories: there's no distinction--they're all just fuel.”
― Haruki Murakami
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