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


Friday, October 11, 2002
I remember the pre-Peter Graves Mission Impossible. The head of the Impossible Missions team then was dark haired and less cool (in the McLuhan sense); his sheer competence had far more energy to it. I missed him and missed those early shows. Probably one season's worth. No one else seemed to care. I suspect Peter Graves was far better, but for me it was like (later) when the star of Alias Smith and Jones shot himself, and they came up with an awful and uncharismatic double. Suddenly Jones was the last link with the original force that the show had contained. I see now that it was a TV spin-off of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, so the Jones character was the last link with Newman and Redford. But this was not so disappointing as silver-haired Peter Graves.


posted by william 12:20 AM
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