Nostalgia
I find that the things which spark the most vivid recollections of the past are snatches of music, mainly pop, soul, R&B, tunes that I would have heard on the radio, on pub jukeboxes, my own records, old ones that I seldom play. Sometimes it's hearing a tune that sparks the vivid recall, but often it's just a spontaneous eruption in my own head. Of course I don't require to hear a pop tune in order to evoke memories, other things will do it, but mostly they do occur spontaneously.
The point of interest, to me, in this phenomenon, is its fragmentary and selective nature, whatever the prompting source. My strongest memories are like snapshots, and like snapshots, they don't reveal what happened earlier or later. Naturally, there are always areas of the past one would like to forget, and others one would like to remember more fully. But I find that my brain throws out memories in quite an arbitrary manner, and the gaps in between seem to be getting longer and more misty. I've become fascinated by the aging process as it affects the mind, and I am in a position to experience it at first hand. It's a bit hard to tell if your mind is deteriorating, if that very deterioration prevents you from recalling if your mind was in fact sharper when you were younger. I'm not at all sure that it was sharper; perhaps a little bit quicker at times, more impulsive.
A specific case that has intrigued me lately came about by my looking up the pop music charts for the 60s and 70s, in the course of putting together retrospective music compilations, both of which are easy to do with the aid of the computer. What I found was that a large proportion of tunes on the charts were ones I'd never heard of, and others I didn't like, then or now. Those I was interested in and knew well were a fairly small number. So there are these misty grey areas in the record, as it were, as well as in memory. Another similar case is with diaries, that record films seen, which is usually of no use at all because I haven't the faintest recollection of having seen the film.
My general impression now is that life is a pretty arbitrary business, contingent rather than necessary, just one damned thing after another, as someone said about history, lacking much of a real purpose aside from the biological on.
The point of interest, to me, in this phenomenon, is its fragmentary and selective nature, whatever the prompting source. My strongest memories are like snapshots, and like snapshots, they don't reveal what happened earlier or later. Naturally, there are always areas of the past one would like to forget, and others one would like to remember more fully. But I find that my brain throws out memories in quite an arbitrary manner, and the gaps in between seem to be getting longer and more misty. I've become fascinated by the aging process as it affects the mind, and I am in a position to experience it at first hand. It's a bit hard to tell if your mind is deteriorating, if that very deterioration prevents you from recalling if your mind was in fact sharper when you were younger. I'm not at all sure that it was sharper; perhaps a little bit quicker at times, more impulsive.
A specific case that has intrigued me lately came about by my looking up the pop music charts for the 60s and 70s, in the course of putting together retrospective music compilations, both of which are easy to do with the aid of the computer. What I found was that a large proportion of tunes on the charts were ones I'd never heard of, and others I didn't like, then or now. Those I was interested in and knew well were a fairly small number. So there are these misty grey areas in the record, as it were, as well as in memory. Another similar case is with diaries, that record films seen, which is usually of no use at all because I haven't the faintest recollection of having seen the film.
My general impression now is that life is a pretty arbitrary business, contingent rather than necessary, just one damned thing after another, as someone said about history, lacking much of a real purpose aside from the biological on.
posted by Peter Shelton at 6:07 AM
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