On the Sea of Memory: A Journey from Forgetting to Remembering
Jonathan Cott
Random House: New York, 2005
Seattle Public Library
362.19616 c8271o 2005
'Memory' isn't just a data bank of pieces of information. Memory pretty much covers everything we know and feel, and need to know and feel, to function - on every level (16).
Luis Buñel: You have to begin to lose your memory, if only in bits and pieces, to realize that memory is what makes our lives. Life without memory is no life at all... Our memory is our coherence, our reason, our feeling, even our action. Without it we are nothing (27).
It's said that memories are imperfect reconstructions of our experiences. We remember how we have experienced not the events themselves but rather the remembering of something. One might even say that the act of remembering itself creates a brand-new memory of that memory (86).
Richard Restak: Photographs as metaphors for memory [are] too static. You can't modify what's in a photograph. It's a more dynamic process, it's modifiable by experience... (86-7).
Richard Restak: Your brain is changing moment to moment as you're reading and talking... In each moment the brain and memory are being changed and altered a little bit, they're not the same as they were a few minutes ago. And they're everlastingly dynamic (87).
Richard J. McNally: When we recall a memory, we reconstruct it from elements distributed throughout the brain. Of course, when there are permanent records of the remembered event - a literal videotape, for example, or historical archives - we then have a sort of gold standard against which to compare the accuracy of our recollection. The fact that memory is reconstructive and not a videotape means that memories are always "false" to some degree (109).
One of the fascinating things I discovered while working on this book is that the Latin word memoria was the old term for both memory and imagination (110).
Constantin Stanislavski: Time is a splendid filter for our remembered feelings - besides it is a great artist. It not only purifies, it also transmutes even painfully realistic memories into poetry (138).
In Arabic the word dhikr designates both repetition and remembrance (159).
"Even inside my head," [Floyd Skloot] writes, "there is a feeling of being lost, thoughts that go nowhere, emptiness where I expect to find words or ideas, dreams I never remember." It's haunting (200).
Richard Restak: Photographs as metaphors for memory [are] too static. You can't modify what's in a photograph. It's a more dynamic process, it's modifiable by experience... (86-7).
Richard Restak: Your brain is changing moment to moment as you're reading and talking... In each moment the brain and memory are being changed and altered a little bit, they're not the same as they were a few minutes ago. And they're everlastingly dynamic (87).
Richard J. McNally: When we recall a memory, we reconstruct it from elements distributed throughout the brain. Of course, when there are permanent records of the remembered event - a literal videotape, for example, or historical archives - we then have a sort of gold standard against which to compare the accuracy of our recollection. The fact that memory is reconstructive and not a videotape means that memories are always "false" to some degree (109).
One of the fascinating things I discovered while working on this book is that the Latin word memoria was the old term for both memory and imagination (110).
Constantin Stanislavski: Time is a splendid filter for our remembered feelings - besides it is a great artist. It not only purifies, it also transmutes even painfully realistic memories into poetry (138).
In Arabic the word dhikr designates both repetition and remembrance (159).
"Even inside my head," [Floyd Skloot] writes, "there is a feeling of being lost, thoughts that go nowhere, emptiness where I expect to find words or ideas, dreams I never remember." It's haunting (200).
