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, December 14, 2004

I remember my father taking me on some Saturday mornings to -- I think -- NYU alumni association sponsored performances at Town Hall. But I might be conflating times he took me to NYU events and times he took me to Town Hall. At Town Hall I remember in particular one performance: an actor doing Browning's "Pied Piper." He was in costume, with pipe, and so on, but otherwise alone. He was very good. He must have done other things, but all I remember is the Pied Piper. I think we'd just learned the story in school -- at any rate it was relevant. My father might have read it aloud. I know that we had a record of James Mason reading it, and I wonder if there's any chance it was him. But I doubt it -- at least the actor I remember doesn't at all coincide with my adult sense of James Mason.

posted by william 1:54 AM
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