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, October 26, 2004

I remember that commercials almost never mentioned rivals by name. They were "the leading brand," or some such periphrasis. But RC broke this taboo (or was one of the early breakers of it). I remember their great commercial, where they had an announcer saying that they were half the price of BLEEP or BLEEP. He hated being interrupted. But he kept being bleeped, until finally he walked off dejectedly, then suddenly ran back to the camera and yelled "of Coke or Pepsi!" beating the panicky bleeps that came split seconds too late triumphantly.

posted by william 7:49 PM
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