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

Monday, July 12, 2010

I remember U2's Joshua Tree album. I remember listening to With or Without You on the school bus, which was the only place I heard pop music; at home it was classical, my parents' collection of 60s records, or nothing. Even asking for a radio (not a walkman, mind you, a radio) was a huge deal for me—risky, questionable. My father didn't like modern music, found it simpleminded, repetitive, boring. It was hard to like something he knew so much about and found so thoroughly dismissable. But I loved Where the Streets have No Name, and I remember listening to it with my oldest friend Nina, in her grandmother's guest room, when we took that solo trip to California, the summer before we turned 13. No pop music in family space, but go ahead and fly across country alone with your friend. What strange mix will my children take for granted?

posted by Rosasharn 11:19 PM
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