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

Wednesday, August 03, 2005

I remember that not only did I get versions of current movies that I hadn't seen from the MAD Magazine parodies that were good enough for me to be in conversations about the movies themselves, but also that my first introduction to some Shakespeare came from MAD. In particular I remember versions of Shakespeare speeches updated to contemporary lingo -- well maybe not quite contemporary but a Beat parody of contemporary. I remember Brutus's speech turned into one with this refrain: "But Caesar was a real cool cat." Except, that, now that I think about it, it must have been Antony's speech, addressed I think to "Brothers!", and that "But Brutus is an honorable man" was rendered "But Brutus is a real cool cat." Now I think I remember it this way, that is that I am recovering the accurate memory, but I didn't until now.

posted by william 5:12 PM
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