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, April 04, 2009

I remember thinking "musician" and "magician" were the same word. I didn't have the concept musician, and so I heard all mentions of musicians as being about magicians. One day they told me that my second cousin, a musician, would be coming to dinner at my downtown grandmother's house with us. I was very disappointed when I found out the truth.

posted by william 1:44 PM
. . . 1 comments
Comments:
Along the same lines, my mother told me one evening that she had bought me a top, which I interpreted to be a spinning top (I remember particularly coveting one of the large ones with a whip). I was pretty disappointed when it turned out to be a shirt.

# posted by sravana : 3:09 PM

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