A memory: Something you have / Something you've lost.
1
There is a picture of me. I look like i am seven years of age, and I am dressed up like
an indian. I have plastic boots and i sit in the sand. I am a bit dirty. I Do not look
happy. Instead, I look disturbed. Maybe by the experience of being photographed,
maybe I am angry for another reason. I don’t know, because I have no recollection of
the moment that the photographer pushed the button of the camera. The man behind
the camera did not see me at the moment he pushed the button of the camera.
2
There is another memory that is related to this one. I remember as a kid looking at a
postal card, sent by my grandma when she was visiting islands in the Pacific Ocean.
There is a hut. In front of the hut there is a man. He looks fierce, and his tongue is
sticking out. Somebody told me he did so because he was afraid the camera was going
to steal his soul. I have never doubted the truth of that story until this very moment.
3
What if it is true, I remember thinking. What if souls do get stolen with the aid of
camera’s, and we let it happen, just because we have grown too numb to realise it?
Will sticking out your tongue be enough to prevent that from happening? Why did the
warrior in the picture did not kill the photographer, thus taking back his soul?
4
In the Etnologic Museum in Antwerp I once saw an exposition with photo’s of Native
Americans from the late ninetheenth century. The story next to the photo’s said these
men and women were paid to pose like ‘real indians’. They were put on tribal clothes
(which they had to give back later), and some liquor. The background would be a
painting of an arid landscape. All the men and women in the pictures look tired.
5
Everything is created. Memories do not exist before you make them up. Without
imagination there are no memories. Once you allow yourself to have a memory, you
loose a specific amount of your talent for living. You cannot undo a memory. Only
when you die, all this will be gone forever. Such is the nature of oblivion.
6
Colors of memory: sepia, sea-grey (and sometimes brown)/ Sounds of memory:
piano, birds, moaning/ Nature of memory: glacier, cave, mountain, river/Dogs of
memory: dachshund, dalmatian/ Friends of memory: black holes, furnaces, tunnels/
Patron Saint of memory loss: St Antony (He Who Finds Back Your Keys)/ Wind of
memory: Mistral/ Place of memory: A desert/ Foods of memory: oysters, bread, milk.
7
The moon was not formed by a piece of earth that fell off, thus leaving a hole in the
earth we now call the Mediteranean Sea. Instead the moon was formed by colliding of
the earth and another planet. The debris became the moon. It all happened very fast.
How does the moon remember to stay spheric? There is no erosion on the moon.
8
Phenomenon: colliding memories.
9
The small amount of time when you have met a person, but you are not yet aware
how big an influence he or she will have on your life. The impossibility to remember
that transition. The moments in between having had an epiphany, an insight, and
laying old and forever obsolete ideas to rest. You cannot go back to these old beliefs.
10
During the life of my grandmother airplanes, vacuumcleaners and synthetic clothing
were invented. At the end of her life, usually wearing a dress that was also a
sculpture, she owned a big television. After her death it was inherited by my uncle.
11
Ghosts are memories that are so vivid they materialize and haunt you.
12
The dream is the outhouse of memories. To remember all of the impressions you get
during any single day would be too much for a sane human to carry. Therefore, at
night, with the means of dreams, you flush this stack of potential memories like you
would a turd. This also means it is very dangerous to try to remember your dreams.
13
You never look anybody in the eye, do you? Every seven years your cells will be
renewed. When you become 49 this will happen for the seventh time in your life. You
will marry and have seven kids. You and them are cursed until the seventh generation.
The curse will be to not remember what will happen to you after you have read this.
There will be this song by you know who, and it will be there all the time, even in
your sleep. This will happen, unless you send a letter to seven times seven people.
14
A way to catch a monkey is to put a peanut in a hole in a rock. The monkey will try to
take it out but because his hand forms a fist it will get stuck. But it will not let go.
15
How long does it take for a memory to find a definitive shape? I remember being
made fun of as a kid because I told adults about ‘the old days’. I am still angry.
16
There once was a vicious tribe where they would tell a young child he would be the
holy man: the storyteller of the village. He would be the One to preserve and tell the
myths. But this was a vicious hoax. He learned all the stories by heart, but when he
turned 16, the tribe sacrificed the kid to their malicious gods. The next day, the cycle
started all over again with a new born child. This is how they remember their stories.
17
Are you scared of time? Does your past needs to be destroyed for a future to exist?
Levi-Strauss wrote that cultures without museums are ‘cold cultures’. They thus need
to keep their cultural identity intact by constantly reproducing the past, so not to fall
victim to total oblivion. Only by standing still in time are they able to move forward.
18
Iconoclasm is necessary to let new gods take the place of old ones, says Boris Groys.
19
It happened more then once that I started reading a new book, realizing after several
chapters that i’d read it before. Why do we trust our memory? How can we not?
20
How to solve problems regarding your memory? Map it, draw it, be tough, be sweet.
Some people remember everything, from train timetables to weather measurements,
the food they ate and the feelings they felt. Not just of one particular day, but of all
days. Some people have a photographic memory. I know of an elderly artist who, by
memory, can draw all the views of his childhood. When they went to his hometown to
check, they found he had made perfect drawings, from the low perspective of a child.
21
A tourist shop is selling future memories. Later they are found on a flea market. I buy
them, and take them home. These memories are in boxes in my storage room. They
take up my space, but I can’t let them go. I feel responsible for taking care of them.
22
I suspect myself of creating memories I never had. I think of this when I watch a
movie that I haven’t seen for a long while. I remember that the first time I saw it, I did
back then have certain feelings with this or that scene: emotions bordering on those of
being in love. I do not know if these feelings were related to my real life back then. I
feel this story is related to using drugs. I feel it is about creating fake memories.
23
I’ve heard it said that when you grow very old, even the cancers in your body slow
down. If someone offers you eternal life, do not forget to ask for eternal youth too.
24
You can’t run from your bad memories: you will always take them with you. But
there is to be said something positive for dealing with them in a warm, sunny place.
25
My strategy was always to replace memories at the earliest possible moment. In doing
so, there would be bouts of nostalgia and loss, but the new would win the day. I now
believe that I misused other people for dealing with my past. I am truly sorry for that.
26
In the middle of the Great War, while soldiers were still kneedeep in muddy rat
infested trenches, French artists were given the commission to already start making
monuments to remember the war and the men that died -and would die in the future.
27
My best memory is a cascade. I travel my worlds within seconds, finding myself
listening to Lou Reed on a Sunny Afternoon, making up future memories, then
walking on a Portuguese mountain. I am mostly arriving somewhere, or leaving.
Victor Engbers, Duizel, 2010