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

Saturday, September 01, 2007

I remember the words I would fill in for "I Me Mine," wryly thinking of myself as wryly thinking of myself as wryly humorous:
Joy to the Earth!
I me mine I me mine I me mine.
We want...a playoff berth.
I me mine I me mine I me mine

(Of course my subvocalization of playoff had to rush and slur it.) The Mets and the Knicks were much on my mind at the time, and I guess my relation to the Beatles was sort of like my relation to sports teams: groups that worked together and that combined expertise with an appealing vulnerability, felt in the way I knew the players individually (unlike the players in rival groups), a vulnerability that made me love them.

posted by william 1:08 PM
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