I remember / je me souviens
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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


Wednesday, June 23, 2004
I remember that "The Star Spangled Banner" has several more verses. I remember sitting at my desk reading the hand-lattered hand-out with all the verses, or at least with two of them, when I learned the song. Also I remember that it only became the National Anthem some time in the twentieth century. I remember wondering what they sang at baseball games before that.


posted by william 8:33 AM
. . .
0 comments
Comments:

Post a Comment





. . .