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


Thursday, February 25, 2010

I remember the little booklets of lyrics that sometimes came with tapes, and the slightly bigger ones sold separately in music stores. I remember how strange it was to read the lyrics disjoint from the music -- terribly bad poems, but with some kind of authority to them.


I remember the first store in Koramangala that carried English music. It also doubled up as an internet cafe, and charged for e-mail by the page.



posted by sravana 7:04 AM
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