Something No One Could Take Away

I’m reading Proust and the Squid – The story and science of the reading brain and did you know that Socrates was worried about the written word?

He was worried about what it would do to memory; worried about the power of memory when there is the “crutch” (my word) of the written word as a reminder.

Sound a little inane to you?

Well this middle aged googled-brained sapien wants his memory back. I’m not talking anything major but considering the power of my memory in undergrad that allowed me to ace a perfect score on a Continental Rationalism Spinoza exam and with now and how if I get rolling in a conversation I can’t recall this or that actor’s name or the bass player on Kinda Blue (Paul Cobb? Mr. PC?) or yaddi yadda, it would be nice to not have to google things or IMDB them. (Just used IMDB as a verb)

Consider this passage from the book:

                Certainly my children’s eighty-six year-old Jewish grandmother, Lotte Noam, would flummox future generations. On almost any occasion she can supply an appropriate three-stanza poem from Rilke, a passage from Goethe, or a bawdy limerick--to the infinite delight of her grandsons. Once, in a burst of envy, I asked Lotte how she could ever memorize so many poems and jokes. She answered simply, “I always wanted to have something no one could take away if I was ever put into a concentration camp.” Lotte prompts us to pause and consider the place of memory in our lives, and what the incremental atrophying of this quality, generation by generation, ultimately means.

 And I complain about traffic. SMH. But...

Strong word: atrophying.

It is, your memory, atrophying.

One of the first songs I wrote that would be played in front of people went something like this:

Do you remember, when we were kids?
Life so easy and so carefree
take me back now because I need to see
Do you remember?
I remember
Do you remember?
I remember

From the oral to the written and from the written to the digital…the times they are uh changin’.

Maybe I’m just wistful.
Maybe I’m just scared for my kids.
Maybe I can still recall the definition of god – being consisting of infinite attributes, each of which expresses eternal and infinite essence.

Mode – that which the intellect perceives of substance as if constituting its essence.

Memory is essential, from the greek ontos – that without which a thing cannot exist.