It’s only a very smart criminal whose pulse does not accelerate when the prosecution pulls the DNA analysis or the cellphone records. The former brings new meaning to “They’re after your blood”; the latter’s the diary you always wanted to keep, but just not that version. “The day before the murder you made three calls to the state witness…”. And you thought they had been deleted, but what you did not know is that a digital footprint cannot be obliterated, and within the deep space behind the screens live some people who know how to travel through the silicon passages and open doors into rooms which you thought did not exist.
There are times I wish my mind was a cellphone, not to access my thoughts as a seven-year old, when I was told that my brother was going to live with my father, but those really good ideas I have had but did not act upon soon enough and, subsequently, forgot. The truth is that they are not forgotten: they linger on the edges of my consciousness and, try as I might, will not be coaxed any nearer to the grey matter which conceived them. It gives new meaning to “brain-teaser”, where the brain teases me with the scent of that idea, but keeps its bloom unseen. There’s no use in trying mechanical methods such as relaxing techniques or word association, expecting a lower-level brain function to gain access to a higher. But if some brain technician could access your thought log and bring up that idea you want to work on. No need for neuro-surgery, just a few electrodes on the skull and the record’s there.
My problem’s not new: “I always carry a little notebook and write down any ideas that come up unexpectedly…” is something I have heard people say; they might add that I am making a meal of something so simple; expensive, too – a pen and paper is somewhat cheaper. In theory, full marks; in practice, a fail. Being creative is not Boy Scout work: “Be prepared” might be useful for opening a can of Bully, but setting off with pen and paper in top pocket scares away the prey. A good idea is not something to be captured; it must capture you, take you by surprise and set off a jumping jack of ideas which may be doused by all-to-ready-and-waiting pen and paper.
What makes this loss of ideas worse is that there has never been a single instance of my coming across an innovative or original idea and thinking, “Oh, that’s the idea I had!” If this had happened I would at least be at peace about that idea lost to me and found by another. But I know that those forgotten inspirations are still out there and, hopefully, waiting.
I do, though, have a reservation about gaining access to those past thoughts: the loss of mystery. Ever been at the beach, dropped something in the sand and found it? Behold, one of life’s great mysteries: how something you saw drop just there (“with my very own eyes…”) cannot be found. The searching covers the finding: the more the sand is pawed, the more the object is lost. And so with the mind: the harder the thought is chased, the more it eludes the hunt.
I have heard that there exists a branch of philosophy: Philosophy of Mind. I imagine that those who follow it orbit a mysterious planet, the mind, sending probes to its surface and perhaps beyond. Where is it? What is it? What controls it? What are its powers? Any attempt to land upon it, though, has to be discounted. That the mind guards its own is one thing I can contribute to this school of thinking. “Access denied” was patented there where there are no absolutes. If it has foiled my attempts to collect some minor ideas, do they really think it will give up the universe it contains?
Processing memories can be likened to creating Word files for them. In many cases, this is done automatically, by the subconscious mind, and thus we lack conscious knowledge of the access codes, the file names, required to call up and open these “files”, ie., to recall these memories. Those memories are lost.
With sufferers of post traumatic stress disorder, the system for creating memory files has broken down, and the memories cannot be safely processed and filed; they cannot be removed from “current affairs”. They remain forever current, forever shocking: they are free floating memories, apt to ambush the sufferer unbidden and unexpectedly.
But normal memories are, as it were, filed, and we can recall them by calling up that file via its access code, or file name. If however we have kept no note of the access code or file name, that memory is lost to us. And some memories are better lost.
When we call up a memory file and dust down the memory, we rarely refile it unchanged. In playing with the file, we are apt to make some slight changes to its content each time we open that file; thus the memory we have of a particular incident from many years past, particularly from childhood, is unlikely to mirror in detail what actually happened. Unless it is a traumatic memory.
“I remember . . .” I tell my brother.
“But that’s not how I remember it,” he responds. Our memories of the same event from very long ago are rarely exactly the same.
Very interesting – never thought of this. Never thought much about memory, except that I am in total oblivion of what has happened in my past, the ‘normal’ things which my wife recollects about a holiday or what happened to the house then, etc. I seem to live in the moment, superficially perhaps, and take little cognisance of what has happened, except, I suppose, when I am deeply affected.