The stolen records

Or returning the pie…

I remember what happened a bit differently.

This week I became aware of something quite shocking. It needs a lot more processing and fermenting to get the full scope, but I want to share to see if anyone recognises this, feels this. This bake is a hot one, better wear some gloves, while we take it out of the oven.

I have ‘bad’ memory.

If I would go by the used standard in testing and education it is well below average. Not dementia level forgetting but unsettling enough to get me worried. It’s not age related. It didn’t get worse the last decades.  My capacity declines within ‘normal’ parameters. I’m just terrible at remembering names, people, movies, actors, street-names, plant-names, book-titles, writers, difficult words, birthdays. My age.

And I suck at the order. Of letters, numbers, dance-steps, ingredients, stories, jokes, songs, tying knots.

I confuse left with right. Not so much the simple stuff, such as which hand to use, or opening and closing a tap or screw top. I have that sorted. But the more complex can suddenly mirror and feel wrong. 

Sitting on stage behind a drumkit that wasn’t my own having the sudden shock: shit, the thing is setup for a left-hander! And I do prefer to write longhand with left, but play a right-handed drumset in a sort of left-handed way. See, no wonder my mind flips now and then. 

Some of you may signal a disorder or two in all of the above, but stick with me and postpone the diagnosis. There’s more.

I am slow.

Like really slow. Reading and writing. Answering. Understanding. Me making a move in some game is always annoying to the other participants. Especially if I do choose to play at my pace. Conversations would stretch out to months, even decades if you would allow me to properly answer the questions.

I have learned early on it's better if I fake it. Act stupid, blame the headache, the pen, the teacher. Gamble, try to estimate what the answer is. Be sloppy on purpose, sabotage, not participate, not talk, not volunteer, sit on the side, not show up. Practice the art of being invisible. I’m an imaginative coper. On top of an inventive hypochondriac. 

Fear played a big role.

The fear of not sufficing, of not being good enough. Describing it like that hardly catches the rift I felt. Its not falling short for the leap. It is simply not jumping at all. 

And recently I suddenly saw it could be my memory. The way I remember is different from the way that is promoted.

In fact I have great memory. It is not ‘bad’ at all. It has a depth most people seem to lack. It has colors many cannot even name. It holds a complexity that would be the envy of the high scorers. I supply what is not in demand. I am far from unique in this. A lot of people have this. It just isn’t valued, or given attention.

This kind of remembering, does keep the culture alive though. Which is not the case with mainstream memory, which conserves the old. Puts drawings in museums, data in clouds, records what happened by dating, placing, naming, defining. In the right order. Chronological. And then claim it is ‘our’ history.

But that’s not how remembering works. The material memory now seen as normal is not at all logical for me. And the method is very susceptible to fraud. To active rigging. If done correctly you could almost reproduce the remembered thing, the occasion, the event. Really know what happened. In ‘high’ definition. Or that’s the claim, the suggestion.

Bullshit. It helps to have names and sizes and stuff on record. Not refuting that. If you go for recreating that stunning dish though, a recipe won’t suffice. Sheet music doesn’t hold Mozart. The vinyl doesn’t contain Ella. And it’s got nothing to do with the quality of the discs. Or the technology used. Or the quantity.

That is like believing better paint - or more of it - will ultimately make a ‘real’ landscape. Like the department announcing it now even smells like a forest.

Let’s talk about records for a bit, because something very nasty is taking place with them. Records are not just the longplay black circles with the endless spiraling valley of sound pressed into them. I mean records as in all the ways we record what has happened. Our external memory-tools. Maps, books, films, sheet music, shopping lists, all the intentional scratches we carve on to the walls of the cave. When the nah, nah, nah, na-na-nah-naah begins on Hey Jude we all know it is not the actual fab four hiding in the stereo. They are dead and gone. But somehow we forgot. When we call it data we see that as a special kind of record. It holds the truth we tell each other. The whole truth and nothing but. I see it in the tsunami of non-fiction. This is not a record like those storybooks, we state, so help us God, this is non-fiction, you see, data, in book-form. This is a true story. A story it is.

Not so long ago we knew,

when a storyteller started with the words “this is a true story”, we looked at each other and smiled, yeah right.

It is the way. 

Not the what. I remember a dish (or a painting) differently. It is embedded. Not a snapshot. It also does not separate the layers. The colors are part of the smells, the dish and setting and season and company. The time it took. The place. It’s all tied together. I can make a shockingly good meal and never be able to recall the thing. At the dinner table they ask how did you make it, can we have the recipe? No, you can’t, is my inner response. What a stupid assumption! How could you ever make this dish? Yes it’s tomato and watermelon combined, but it won’t be what you just experienced. Why would you even wish to repeat that? Don’t you trust the next meal to be as good as this one? Next seasons tomatoes are not the same as last seasons. They just look similar.

Two modes of remembering

These two modes of remembering resemble being in and out of flow. Out of flow I need arguments, external records, methods, analysis, planning. 

In flow I remember from what is present. And that depends on the level of presence I bring in. Can you see the shift? From external that excludes internal participation. To the internal mode that invites in external memory to play along. Now the whole pie is on the record player. Full circle to the next groove, and the next….listen….

While working from ‘the other memory mode ’ my slowness is transformed. Suddenly people can’t keep up, which I do not get, the clarity of the how is unexplainably obvious in the internal mode. It’s all here, why can’t you see? It’s like a subtle joke that causes an unstoppable belly laugh. How to dissect that without killing the comedian? And anyway, I’m the cook for this dish. Just enjoy the result, savor it, so you too will remember without that scrap of paper, without the instagrammed capture, without the sauce of your story drowning the genuine experience while it is happening. Without the label completely obscuring the content.

I remember the thing itself with the primary awareness that it no longer is and never will return. That it needs me to be remembered. I can only grow this years crop. The name is such an unimportant detail. I try to hold the essence, to have it become part of me so my shape is the shape, my dance is the dance, my dish is the dish. I am not interested in making yesterday's dish, or saying other people's words, or doing other peoples deeds. I make my own mistakes. Those one-offs do not fit the collective cloud. Not found, says the machine. No such thing exists. It is not a word, not in the memory-banks. 

Records help us remember, they are not the memory. We are. 

In how I see it, imperfect remembering (our job) is part of the deal. Every single one of us remembers a different version. And the ‘us’ is not just the eight billion humans. Can you see the advantage in that? (Yes I can see the disadvantages, but the question is if you can see how ingenious so called ‘imperfect’ memory is!) Everything remembers constantly. It is called life. Progression and conservation are lovers. They are both right and need each other.

MISTAKES ARE HOW THIS UNIVERSE WORKS

Perfect memory on its own is dead memory. Memory that is ‘external’ is not memory at all. Remembering is an activity, an act of creation. Telling the story is never ever repeating what was true yesterday. The story is always new. We have forgotten that. 

Remember:

you progressives¹ out there; for renewal nothing can be simply left behind or done away with.

And for the conservatives: let go of the illusion of sustaining. That is like playing a piano with keys that only turn on and are not allowed to fade. Cacophony. Not nice. Do some yinning and yanging, the both of you!

A recipe, a cloud, a library, a record, is of no use if we have forgotten the how. 

Back to the pie.

I have a good mind. I am blessed. Still this society did its stinking best (a Dutchism) to convince me I wasn’t okay, that I was substandard, rebellious, obstinate. I refused normalization, medication, adaptation. I somehow managed to crawl through the cracks. I got lucky to get this far.

Way too many did not make it through the filter. I am angry about that. Furious. White hot lava underneath a semi-civilised crust. Because still they are adding new levels to the high-rise filter.

Now I am almost sixty - I forgot the exact number - and have a pretty good idea of my position. I am not super-smart, I am also far from dumb. I know I often am wrong, have a limited perspective and make lots of mistakes, but I am sure about one thing by now.

Most of the western modern world has a blindspot. 

Let's paint a little picture to make it visible. If you would ask me to put a rough estimate on the angle of the beam that modern thinking applies, what would that angle be? And this is the beauty of writing, nobody is asking me and still I will tell. Try and stop me. I’ll be generous and keep the estimation on the high side. 

A straight angle. Ninety degrees, I would say, is the angle of inclusion. The angle ‘we’ apply and generally accept as wide enough. On good days. On average weekdays sixty is probably closer to the real. Normal people, the big bunch, the conforming citizens, high or low, are more in the thirty-something range. 

Roughly, give or take, ballpark on average ‘we’ miss a fat threehunderd degrees on ‘our’ field of vision.  That is not a blind spot. Hell no. I would confiscate your driver's license. Retroactively. For several generations. 

Do you know how many?

How many, this focal atrocity leaves out of the equation? Of every hundred  people aboard this ship we call civilization, eighty-three are pushed over the railing to sink or swim in the icy ocean. Or they are forced to alter their appearance to beyond recognition, or....the best option on the wonderful menu of empty choices, being coerced to hand over your soul and become a compliant zombie. A slave of the narrow folk. 

Am I exaggerating? I don’t think so. This is the happy version. The digestible one. Am I blaming anyone? No, I assume you didn’t know. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. For now.

But this is not just me speaking, telling you. This is the outer field. The bigger pie. The three-hundred degrees of rejects, the more than eighty percent claiming back their right to join, to speak, to co-decide, to sit at the table and eat your continental breakfast, to crack the concrete of your foundations. We are many. You educated us, now we have a thing or two to teach. You have had the talking stick, now it is our turn. We will ask you back when we’re done. Be our guest, while we try the kingsize bed and take up residence. Can you still participate? Yes, of course but the actual stakeholders are here to stay and vote you off the board.

Tell me, do you remember how we got here? 

One of my ‘records’, A detail of the Tarot card XVIII The Moon. She is angry too about the children who drown in the ocean of ignorance…

1. A progressive is someone who needs to forget. A conservative is afraid of forgetting.