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

Sunday, February 09, 2003

I remember my first post to "I remember / je me souviens," a year ago today, viz: "I remember that during the days of black and white TV, men who were to appear on TV were told to wear light blue shirts instead of white." I remembered this because we were told to wear blue when we went to the studio to see them shooting "To Tell the Truth," a great show. You always knew you'd guessed wrong when the person you guessed was the first one to start standing, after the m.c. said: "Would the real N.N. please stand up." But sometimes there'd be a double psych, and someone would start to stand, sit down, watch someone else start to stand, and then in fact stand up. This was rare though. I remember the real person when we went to see the show was kind of non-descript and awkward looking, and that he hitched his pants and smoothed them down as he stood up. The real what? I don't remember.

posted by william 12:49 AM
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