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

Tuesday, November 05, 2002

I remember in addition to Bat Masterson, who used a derringer (as Tom Wall mentioned in April), and who wore a black cape (or am I confusing him with Zoro?), Yancy Derringer. Only from a song, I think: Yancy -- Yancy Derringer. But then I confuse it with Samson, mighty Samson -- his mother, his mother made him swear, to serve the Lord, do know wrong, bow to God who made him strong, bow to God who made him strong and always use a derringer. I think maybe the phrase "always use a derringer" was in the song. This was a song I played on my little red record player. It was on the same album as John Henry (the steam drill only did nine, boys, the steam drill only did nine....) and Casey Jones (leading to shock when on Workingman's Dead, was it? "Driving that Train" has the same spot in the album -- last song on side two, as I think Casey Jones did on my record). I had another record -- who did the rainbow labels? -- with spirituals on it, and I really loved Swing Low. Again I was surprised when I saw other records with the same label (including possibly the Crosby Stills Nash and Young double album) but different songs. I remember falling in love with James Taylor, and being so pleased that there kept turning out to be pre-first album albums, including James Taylor and the Flying Machine, with "knockin' round the zoo" on it. The group explained the line in "Fire and Rain:" "Sweet dreams and flying machines in pieces on the ground." Later I liked Leonard Cohen, whom I listened to on WNEW-FM, and to bring it full circle, understood what Warren Beatty was up to in McCabe and Mrs. Miller, sound track consisting of Leonard Cohen songs, when he shoots Rene Auberjoins with a derringer thus disproving the latter's skepticism about McCabe's past: "That man? That man didn't shoot anybody."

posted by william 3:01 PM
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