I have this really weird relationship with
memory. I suspect everyone else does too, but I’ve never been in anyone else’s
brain (that I know of) so I’ll just talk about mine for a bit, if that’s cool.
I have a really excellent memory.
Sometimes. For example, I can recite every line in Toy Story because when I was
10 I loved it a lot, and my friend and I watched it twice (that’s right,
twice). Ever since then I have been able to pick up at any point in the film
and keep going until the eyes of those around me become very glazed indeed.
In Year 11 I had a main role in a play. I
learnt everyone else’s lines including mine. Not deliberately, it just
happened. In an exam that I knew I was not going to do particularly well in, I
spent the 40 or so minutes at the end when I wasn’t allowed to leave, writing
out the entire thing. Just for something to do, just because I could.
I was in a choir for all of high school,
and the conductor was one of those amazing people who slightly terrified you,
but mostly inspired you to do better than you thought you ever could. He
refused to let us perform with music in front of us, so we had to memorise
many, many pieces of music, most not in English, every term. And I never
struggled. I felt guilty when he pulled me out in front of the others to
demonstrate how I rarely looked down at music in rehearsal, because it wasn’t
really an achievement for me. I’d sung the piece a few times, so now it was in
my memory, perhaps forever.
But on the other hand, sometimes I have a
terrible memory. Faces. I’m appalling at remembering people’s faces. I have
started forcing myself to picture people’s faces right after I’ve met them,
trying to focus on distinctive features so that if I run into them at Coles the
next day I don’t completely blank them.
Going back to school, friends will often
say to me ‘oh remember when this happened?’ and I’ll think *nope*. And I’m
talking about big, important events here too. Like the time my grade got the
school camp cancelled for successive generations due to our poor behaviour… I
know that full story now, because I made people tell it to me, but I don’t have
any real memories of it myself.
Worst of all are the false memories. Things
I have apparently made up completely, but have somehow convinced myself are real.
My minor in Psychology from the University of Queensland taught me that it’s
very common to have false early memories, which I do, but I’ve also got ones
from my teenage years, from adulthood even. And these tend to freak me out,
really. If you remember something, does that automatically mean it happened?
No. Of course not, but it sure as hell feels like it did. And if you forget
something, doesn’t it really cease to have happened at all? At least for you
anyway.
I often think about this late at night. You
can never remember what happens right before you fall asleep, because everyone
suffers slight amnesia during the first phase of sleep (thanks UQ Psych). But
sometimes when I can’t sleep I’ll try to force myself to remember something.
“Ok Lizzy,” I’ll say to myself, “in the morning try to remember that you
thought about...” but I can never remember what that thing is. Sometimes I
remember that I thought about memory and sleep amnesia, and sometimes I’ll
think about it days later, but usually it’s lost to me. I assume, anyway.
I recently had a light sedation for a
medical procedure. The doctor put the needle in the back of my hand and said,
“Ok, you probably won’t remember anything after this.” I remember staring at an
orderly’s pants that were in my line of sight and thinking, the last thing I’m going to remember is a
butt and finding that a bit funny, and I also remember thinking why am I not asleep yet?
And then I woke up.
But it turns out I’d been out a lot longer
than expected; they’d given me a double dose of the anaesthetic because I’d
started talking (what a surprise). Somewhere after the thought about the
orderly’s butt and not being asleep yet, I started jabbering away, and, unable
to get me to STFU, they drugged me up a bit more.
The nurse told me all this as she checked
my blood pressure and heart rate. And here’s where weird memory stuff comes
into it. I know she told me what I’d been talking about. I remember that. And I
remember being in the recovery ward, but I don’t remember getting there. And I
remember giggling to myself and another nurse asking what was so funny, but I
don’t *completely* remember what I said.
Because I’m pretty sure the first nurse
told me I’d been talking about Pixar film conspiracy theories. Like… what? In
the moments before unconsciousness, a bunch of medical experts couldn’t get me
to go to sleep because I needed to tell them about how Andy’s mum is really Emily? About how all the Pixar films actually occur at different times in the same universe? Is that it? Is that what I was saying?
See I don’t know, because I don’t remember
what the nurse actually said, only that I was giggling to myself in recovery
because I *knew* that I’d been going on about Toy Story on the operating table.
But maybe she said something completely different? Maybe Toy Story is so ingrained in my head that when I can’t remember other things I replace them with it?
I honestly have no idea. If all we are is a brain controlling a meat suit, then
I am a brain trying to understand itself. And that is enough existentialism for
a Sunday afternoon.
I’ve been trying to write this blog on and
off for about a year now. Ironically, I often forget that it’s an idea I had
and then rethink of it, feel like a genius, and then realise it’s one of my oldest
ideas and therefore not something new at all. But still, I’m pleased I’ve
finally put thoughts to words to internet about this.
*Screenshots have been shamelessly stolen from Jon Negroni's blog, click on those theory links up there to make up for this, if you haven't already. You won't be disappointed*
