You can't keep all of the past in a backpack or purse
all of the time. It's heavy and what's worse,
it wouldn't leave room for much else ...
--Miller Williams, "Memory"
Funny how some things stick with you.
I don't have anything like a photographic memory, but I can call up the silver inner sleeve on which are printed the lyrics and credits on Paul Simon's self-titled second album. I can remember the font (times roman or a close cousin, probably set in 11 point type) and a lot of the names of the players.
It was the first time I heard jazz violinist Stephane Grappelli, who played a duet with Simon's acoustic guitar on "Hobo's Blues," an instrumental that clocks in at 80 seconds. Ron Carter played bass on "Run That Body Down," a song that's lyrically intriguing because the singer referred both to himself (Paul) and his wife (Peg) by name. (You could do that?)
Cissy Houston--Whitney's mom--sang on the album. Brazilian percussionist Airto Moreira played on. So did Wrecking Crew veterans Joe Osborn (bass), Larry Knechtel (keyboards) and Hal Blaine (drums). I remember all this. No wonder I can't remember where I parked my car or left my keys; my head is stuffed with 50-year-old liner notes.
Long-term memory is a different animal than short-term memory. My short-term memory probably isn't any worse than it's ever been, but when something like the 50th anniversary of the release of "Paul Simon" on Jan. 24, 1972, comes up, I access long-term files that normally stay closed in my brain.
There's a lot I can't remember about January 1972; I was in eighth grade and on the basketball team, but don't have specific memories about Rialto Junior High's 1972 season (we weren't great and we weren't terrible).
My family would move to Louisiana that summer, but I don't know if we knew that them. I can recall the names of a couple of my friends and only one of my teachers: Mrs. Arthur, she taught science and sponsored the drama club, and coerced me into a production of "Bye, Bye Birdie."
I remember listening to "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" at a friend's house, studying the album jacket for Paul is Dead clues. That friend, whose name I cannot recall, was a Billy Shears truther, convinced that McCartney had blown his mind out in a car sometime in 1966, but I was not convinced.
"Why else would the Beatles have broken up?" he shouted, offering the existence of Wings as proof positive that the living Paul McCartney wasn't the same dude as the guy who wrote "Yesterday."
I am confident of my recollections. But I don't remember where I walked with the dogs this morning. Did we go west down to the skate park or east down the river trail?
I also know I can fabricate memories. I have a mental image of a visit to Cooperstown, N.Y., and the Baseball Hall of Fame that is as clear as any of the above I've just described. I remember the leafy streets, the dappled sunlight, the entrance, the plaques. I remember Ted Williams' jersey, feeling the nap of the flannel. I remember a Kodachrome snapshot of me standing by Stan Musial's plaque.
The trip took place; I confirmed this with my parents. But the snapshot is impossible, Musial was still an active player in 1963, the year we made the trip. His plaque was not there. And it's doubtful Ted Williams' jersey was there either; he had yet to be enshrined. And even if the jersey were there--as part as a special exhibit, for instance--it's doubtful it would have been available for grubby 4-year-olds to handle. Yet the memory is as real as anything that can be said to have happened in the past.
The ancient Greeks routinely called upon Mnemosyne, the goddess of memory and mother of the nine muses, early on in a recitation of an oral epic poem in order that she might guide their account to accuracy. She's called out in both the Iliad and the Odyssey. And Vladimir Nabokov initially intended on calling his 1951 autobiographic memoir "Speak, Mnemosyne." It was only after his publisher Sir Victor Gollancz informed him that little old ladies would not ask a bookseller for a title they could not pronounce that Nabokov agreed to call the book "Speak, Memory."
(While fact-checking that last paragraph, I was reminded that Nabokov's first title for the book was "Conclusive Evidence"--a number of books were printed with it. But, Nabokov writes in his introduction, the first title led too many people to believe that it was a mystery novel. "Speak, Mnemosyne" was proposed as the second title and rejected. I used to know that. I had forgotten.)
Nabokov brought out a revised version of "Speak, Memory" in 1966, ostensibly to correct the record, to put straight the many things he had mis-remembered. But what he does is point up the mutability of our memory, the ways wishfulness and private legend encroach on actual experience.
Early on in the book, Nabokov paints a remarkably tender and detailed portrait of Mademoiselle O, his French-speaking childhood nanny from Switzerland. He conjures the character so thoroughly that we feel we understand perfectly the dynamic between the delicate, spoiled but sensitive child and his well-meaning, deeply opinionated and somewhat comical governess.
Then Nabokov reverses himself, admitting that he doesn't know what he remembers and what he has made up. Perhaps Mademoiselle O is a fiction, a character the novelist has created. Nabokov can't be sure.
I can't be sure where my keys are this minute--did I put them in the drawer or leave them on the table when we got back from the dog park?--but my long-term memories have a remarkable solidity to them. I remember the blue of my father's eyes from one particular moment in 1966 when, on a desert camping trip, he playfully whipped off his sunglasses.
Most things, fortunately, slide away. But some things stick with you.
Philip Martin is a columnist and critic for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at pmartin@adgnewsroom.com.