My sister says I have a great memory,but I fear she is wrong.During my time in Moncton,in 2009,we'd somehow managed to talk about the days of growing up,and she marveled at the things that I was able to recall,about living on the farm,in northeastern New Brunswick,and about our first years in Moncton. Most of her memories,or so she commented on my old blog,were memories of Moncton,and she wondered if some of those were not actual memories,but ideas suggested by viewing photographs that my parents had taken,and that were shown to us often over the years.That seems a fair enough assessment on her part I think because we were more than a year apart in age,and when a person is young,a year is a very long time,in terms of what is remembered and the quality of that memory.
By the time that we'd arrived in Moncton,there was already a good deal that I could recall about my life.But that's not to say that my mind worked in the same way then that it does now.And even though my memories of that time likely existed in a more solidified form than my sister's did,I discovered during these conversations that there were also things that she recalled that I did not,or that took root in my mind very differently.The one story that comes to mind is about a white cat we had when we were very small.In looking back it's clear to me that while there was a developmental difference in our recall of the time,there was also a huge difference in what was actually witnessed.But more on that later.
Memory is the raw material of which memoir is created.old thought must be gathered together and processed,then assembled into a manuscript.Then,at some point the finished product may be published and find it's way into a blog or onto a library shelf.Here in Toronto,the Public Library has hundreds of memoirs.I've read a good number of them,and most fascinate me.But I wonder if those writers have the same struggle with memory that I've had.You see,to me memory rarely exists in pure form,so,consequently,neither can memoir.
Memory,whatever it may be,seems more of a living thing than it does a thing you can gather up and move from one place to another without causing it to be changed in some way.The act of compiling memories into a book seems peculiar to me,as though I'm forcing something to be in a place that it is not intended to be,or would not choose to be on it's own.What I've come to discover about memory,more than anything else is that it's an utterly amazing, astonishing thing with a life of it's own.To a certain extent,as a writer I must deal with memory on it's own terms,and not on my own.
I have a sketchy idea of how memory comes to be.An event occurs,which is witnessed,and can later be recalled for whatever purpose.That ,in it's rawest form is a memory.But where dose that memory go until it is recalled?And what exactly does in consist of when it is not being remembered? How does it come to be reassembled more or less faithfully,perhaps decades later.And why are some events never brought back to mind? On the one hand memory hardly seems like a real thing at all.It's existence is very mysterious in some sense.But on the other hand,memory exhibits behavior.And for a writer of memoir,dealing with that behavior is a never ending struggle,that in part makes the finished product something other that what I would have it be.
I've heard other writers say that they can remember being born.It's not an uncommon idea among some of the memoir writers I know,and most I think hold it as an honest belief.But it's also a thought that I've never bought into at all.
Simply put,my own experience with memory is quite different,and it's allowed me to construct an idea that I think is more or less valid.Memory,to survive,and to be a memory at all must be expressed.It's a kind of use it or lose it proposition.And for a memory to be expressed,a certain level of language acquisition must first be present.Consequently,I don't remember birth.But I'm sure that I had awareness at the time,that awareness was not memory.The first event that I can recall,that I know for certain happened in more or less the way I remember it,occurred when I was much closer to three years old,and could thus communicate using simple,grammatically functional sentences as opposed to just a word or two at a time.When my words formed sentences,my thoughts became more like ideas that just rough cut awareness.
I also know today that that first memory was experienced in a very alien way,compared to more recent events,It was a very strange event that I took simply as something that was happening,but which had very little significance.I am able to recall today,not only the memory itself but the context of the developmental process on my understanding of it.And this reinforces my idea about memory.It may not be a perfect academic construct in a psychological sense,but it makes perfect sense in my mind.
My sister made a good observation about memory too,which I need to mention.I really can't be sure that everything recall is being constructed from only my own memory.Those same pictures that my sister called to mind were pictures I'd seen all my life too.And I'm sure that I've drawn conclusions based on those photographs,that are not strictly speaking memory.The same would apply to things that I've been told or to stories I've heard.In my mind,that is more mythology than memory,but keeping mythology out of memory's gated community has proven nearly impossible for me.In fact,I'm not always certain I can distinguish the one from the other.
In writing memoir I've sometimes accessed secondary sources,most notably journals that I'd written years before.Both are a product of memory-sort of.But they are two very different things,and the writing of one is very unlike that of the other.Journals are normally writing a life as it's being lived,and as such are much closer to the event in question.For the most part,they are decent source material where memory is concerned.But,the living of life is not always comfortable,and so,journals,at least the ones I've used,are not always as objective as they could be.
Memoir depends more on recall and is thus more distant from the events being recalled.So I find it seems to have a different character than journals do.Of course,distant memories may be recalled less accurately as time passes.They also tend to be viewed through a reflective eye and may be more objective or refined,over a long period of time.Hence they become very different in quality.The bottom line for me seems to be that what I write about today when I write memoir,I think very differently about than I did years ago when I was first writing it.
I believe,though that my memory is more or less reliable,even if it behaves in different ways at different times.Secondary source material is often,but not always helpful to me.I tend to value interpretation as a writer,although an interpreted event is not exactly a memory either.So my memoir continues to be made of imperfect,impure materials.I really know of no other way to build it.But I want to be aware,and have you be aware that the nature of memory imposes some limitations on memoir as a finished product.Really,it could not be otherwise.
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