Tag: memory

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Music

I have to watch my step. Memory is an intermittent joy and trap. I am either blessed or cursed with lots of experience. It’s intermittent, and it can be a pain, you know where.
A song can set it off and expose my memory weakness. I am in the thick of it and haven’t even moved. A bit too much like Billy Pilgrim in Slaughterhouse-Five for my liking.
I prefer my visits to the past without the audio prompts provided by old rock bands or folksingers. Those tend to stir the mud, and I have to deal with the recall of things that pierce the heart.

I prefer to trip through the past in a controlled fashion. I’m in charge. I visit as I wish. Dampen down the violence of young love, the intentness of feelings, or the stupidity of inaction.

This way, it becomes conjecture on the possibilities of human behavior. And not observations of our weaknesses.

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The Past

It is not a safe place to go. You’d think that because the past is past, it’s unchanging. But, for those of us who mine the past for inspiration, It can be full of eddies, gyres, rip tides, and currents. It’s true, it lacks a pulse, but that hardly matters.

Think about the unresolved. It sits on your chest like a mighty reservoir that strains against its banks. You delve into it for an idea, an amusing story. But instead, it insists that there is more to it than you ever analyzed.

One night you are driving along a dark road, and the meaning of that little suppressed memory borrows up into plain thought. It’s much more embarrassing or rage-producing than you guessed. You are glad that this did not occur to you while writing. It’s just too painful for public display.

But while elucidating the memory, you follow just a single thread to a new idea for a story.

The past may be dead. But it is not unchanging.