Memory

 Last week I received a wonderful gift. A personal letter arrived in the post (how often does that happen nowadays?) from somebody I had not seen for nearly fifty years. When we were both twelve we shared a dormitory in a British boarding school that could have served as a model for Evelyn Waugh. He possessed the foresight to keep some form of diary and during the pandemic he dug it up and found references to me, so he looked me up. Four days after I received the letter we met up for lunch, so our curiosity had certainly been pricked.

 

Ever since the letter arrived my mind, specifically my memory, has been working overtime. It is quite extraordinary how something can trigger a lost memory from long ago. Then the real magic lies how the recollection causes a cascade of other memories to rush back like a flood. Now the process has started I cannot see how it might stop, especially since this former acquaintance seemingly has a large supply of diary entries to share.

 

One aspect of this that I am finding fascinating is how the memories come back from rather indirect triggers and following a strange maze. My former friend included a photo from one of his diary entries in his letter and it was somehow the handwriting, even its precise shade of blue, that contributed to the vividness of recollection of a whole series of incidents not mentioned in the correspondence.

 

To make the experience even more vibrant, after lunch on Sunday we happened to visit the Rubin Museum in Manhattan, where an exhibition explores a type of Himalayan mindfulness called a Mandala. This was all about finding peace and growth from turning negative emotions into things we can use in a positive way. One part of the exhibit asked us to experience a particular smell and to see where our associations of that odour took our minds. I have some familiarity with the concept: I associate Faro airport in Portugal with a particular smell which always makes me blissfully happy whenever I experience a similar smell or even whenever I think about it.

 

I was not the ideal subject for odour exhibit itself, because my sense of smell is so bad. If I lost it during Covid I probably would not have noticed it. It is a disability that I have always considered more of a blessing than a curse, especially living in garbage-wracked New York City. But I sat down and tried to smell the odour the computer was surely emitting and could hardly smell anything.

 

That called to mind one of my go-to cabaret numbers that I sing to the tune of Lloyd-Webber’s memory. I adapted it from somebody else’s skit. It always goes down well with any crowd over fifty years old (but not so old that they can’t catch the words of course). My favourite verse goes like this:

Midnight, not a sound from the pavement.

Well, no sound whatsoever, where’s my hearing aid gone.

I can’t see much, and nowadays I’ve no sense of smell,

And as for sex drive, (spoken in fierce New York accent) fuggetaboutit.

I leave it to the reader to discern which of the claims in this verse are autobiographical and which made up for comedy value.

 

The combination of the Rubin exhibit with the tsunami of memory only raised my sense level to an even higher plane. Now, a week after the initial stimulus, I still find myself recalling the strangest things, and I am usually unsure of where the trigger has come from for many of these memories.

 

One image might be a tree with a trunk and many branches leading to many other branches. The entire tree might be a model for our entire life experience. Most of can remember stuff that recently happened, represented by the lower part of the trunk, and things that had a profound effect on us and are permanently etched on our minds (perhaps inaccurately). But the flow from the trunk base to the outer branches has been cut somehow so the memory is lost. Then a trigger brings something from a small distant leaf into consciousness. That event somehow unblocks lots of other connections and branches all over the tree. More of the tree is richer as a result.

 

There must be a very effective branch of therapy in these insights, and probably many people already practising it. The full collection of possible memories from our life’s experiences is our available database of wisdom, and the more of that wisdom is available to us the better decisions we can make and the richer lives we can lead. Multiply this by the people in the world and the potential for human development is enormous.

 

My last week indicates a few possible approaches. Growing and broadening the triggers would be one promising avenue. Even without the diary, meeting somebody who crossed my path fifty years ago would surely have given plenty of ammunition to clear away the blockages in my memory tree. This approach has far greater potential now thanks to social media, which is making such unlikely connections more likely than ever before. But incentivising schools to host reunions might be a cheap way to unleash connections. Even cheaper would be to encourage the same schools to develop their alumni Facebook pages and to make more effort to find their lost sheep. Then there is the wonderful practice of writing diaries, and then really holding them for years and years. Perhaps the ever-growing supply of photos stored on mobile phones will have a true benefit in later years.

 

My first reaction on receiving my letter offers a different lesson. I was immediately reminded of my memory of my own character at the time, and that included a shameful tendency towards verbal bullying, something I have never been able to fully shake off. Now, I wonder if it is possible that many of those broken connections in my memory tree are because I have chosen to break them because of some traumatic association? That feels quite likely to me. So therapeutic tools to gently face up to the trauma before trying to fix the connections might be a worthwhile approach. That takes us right back to Mandalas, as well as to more traditional kinds of therapy.

 

Understanding dreams is another possible avenue. I used to experience déjà vu a lot when I was younger, and it still occurs occasionally. My own theory for my déjà vu is that an experience in real life is mirroring an earlier dreamt experience. Dreams can be sort of scenarios, where the mind starts with a likely experience and lets it play through. It should not be such a surprise if the dreamt scenario is so well-structured that it really occurs later. Whether my theory has any credence or not, dreams are a part of our wisdom that we could learn to benefit more from.

 

All of this is especially relevant because of the growing prevalence of dementia around the world, a consequence of so many people living to a great age. I see dementia at close quarters at the home where we volunteer, and, after an initial period where it can almost be funny like a comedy sketch, before long it becomes anything but funny. The suffering is acute and painful to observe, and there is little that can be done to alleviate it, only the expensive and depressing practice of sitting with sufferers all day every day: I salute the caring souls that do this, usually for pitiful rewards. Any medical or psychological advance that enables more people to live longer without dementia or to suffer less when it arrives would be a boon to humanity.

 

My erstwhile and perhaps future friend paid me a wonderful service this week. Long may those broken connections be mended.