I remember / je me souviens

I remember / je me souviens

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For those limbic bursts of nostalgia, invented by Proust, miniaturized by Nicholson Baker, and freeze-dried by Joe Brainard in his I remember and by Georges Perec in his Je me souviens.

But there are no fractions, the world is an integer
Like us, and like us it can neither stand wholly apart nor disappear.
When one is young it seems like a very strange and safe place,
But now that I have changed it feels merely odd, cold
And full of interest.
--John Ashbery, "A Wave"

Sometimes I sense that to put real confidence in my memory I have to get to the end of all rememberings. That seems to say that I forego remembering. And now that strikes me as an accurate description of what it is to have confidence in one's memory.
--Stanley Cavell, The Claim of Reason

Sunday, August 18, 2002

I remember movies rated M (for mature audiences only). Straw Dogsmay have been the first M movie I saw, although I think some of the more risquee James Bond movies might have been rated M as well. I think that the neat and surprising movie Vanishing Pointmight have been rated M. The rating seemed so sophisticated. It wasn't a promise of nudity of the sort that (I was told) you got in R (Restricted) movies like Carnal Knowledge. (And how weird that Midnight Cowboywas rated X. It just gave it cachet, and made everyone want to claim they'd seen it.) The M seemed more like the M who headed MI-5 in the James Bond movies it adorned -- sophisticated, mysterious, superior. I remember the red M screen at the beginning of M rated movies. They had all the pizazz that foreign movies would have later.

posted by william 1:25 AM
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