June 29, 2007
Who wants to know about me? Want to hear a story - a story about a woman sitting at her desk writing? Writing and wondering about that story - what to write - what's the true story?
The Alchemical Psychologist says that all stories, all histories, are fictions. By the time we recall events from memory they've changed from travelling all those dark corridors in the mind.
Even the brightest minds can trick things around.
What's more, our perception of events is always coloured by our ways of perceiving - our thoughts and beliefs.
Coloured!
My mother always told me I had my father's duck-shit eyes. Imagine that. I've gone through most of my life seeing things through duck-shit eyes.
These days I prefer to think I'm looking out at the world through amber-flecked green or at the very least murky-pond...
My point is; no matter what story - its a fiction. I'll tell you! It might be beautiful, it could be dark and twisted, but it won't be the truth.
The Alchemical Psychologist says that all stories, all histories, are fictions. By the time we recall events from memory they've changed from travelling all those dark corridors in the mind.
Even the brightest minds can trick things around.
What's more, our perception of events is always coloured by our ways of perceiving - our thoughts and beliefs.
Coloured!
My mother always told me I had my father's duck-shit eyes. Imagine that. I've gone through most of my life seeing things through duck-shit eyes.
These days I prefer to think I'm looking out at the world through amber-flecked green or at the very least murky-pond...
My point is; no matter what story - its a fiction. I'll tell you! It might be beautiful, it could be dark and twisted, but it won't be the truth.
"History is written by the winners."
ReplyDeleteThat statement alone asserts the truth of what you say Dan.
I would take an issue with your statement that what we write is 'coloured' by our recollection.
Research into how people remember things shows that largely, the contents of people's memory is fiction.
We start by choosing to observe, look away from the mildly retarded person having the temerity to drool in our presence. Then we choose what to remember and which bits of it to remember. We run those observation through the filter system of our beliefs. With majority the belief system is already divergent from what passes for truth to the degree that in the olden days they would have been eaten by a sabretoothed tiger.
Add to that natural entropy of whats in our head and imperfect retrieval and its a little wonder that we remember anything remotely like what happened (and largely not).
Interestingly, if you do want to remember something, start by remembering the last thing and walk backwards... funny thing how mind works.
wulfius darling I completely agree with you about the way of things (and not just because 'according to your system of belief you are right')... I would like to add that the filter system is a coloured filter system... like a gel on a theatre spotlight.
ReplyDeletegenetic memory is an interesting take on things (why shouldn't that tiger get his prey?) and is also one of those matters that we need to now question as 'truth' (my dna says I should behave like this or that - is it true??) - the primal brain is just so darn unreliable... we can always question what we think - ask what we know ABSOLUTELY and the answer is pretty much nothing.
Maybe only love.
meanwhile...we choose to go with what we think we know to be true because the alternative is to do the work of unravelling it all and living without the stories that rule us.
isn't that right? ;)
My mother always told me that I couldn't sing - good thing I played the piano. So I grew up thinking I had a terrible voice. Guess what - I dont! Every time I sing ... and I love to sing ... I have that little voice in the back of my head that says 'you sound like shit' while another voice tells me I sing sweetly and beautifully.
ReplyDeleteMy mother says I was painfully shy as a child, my father says I was a self contained child?? I remember being scared a lot ... its all various takes on the same situation ... coloured by those filters. Did my Mum suffer from being shy as a child, did my Dad regard himself as a self contained child or person. Do I put my own fear onto Dylan? Argh!!
It's interesting what you say about cellular memory. I've been working with kinesiology for coming close to a year now ... working with my body's memories ... remembering stuff that I have forgotten. Working through all those blocks that have been created on the way, so I can be free to keep moving, keep creating.
In psychology they have a phenomena to do with memory - where, especially if you are told countless times as a child, of a specific event, that you actually believe that you remember it ... when all you are doing is remembering others details of you there. Can I really remember dragging the dog across the stage in my first dance concert, crooning 'Strolling in the Park' or have I just recreated it using my Grandpa's narrative.
But I wonder ... I have a memory of being locked out of the house as a child - while my sister was a baby. It's vivid, its heart wrenching, because my mother yelled and carried on, because I was hysterical at not being able to get in the house. She says it never happened, I'm certain it did ... but I'm also wondering ... did I create that image to make sense of the way I was feeling, of being 'shut out' after my sister's birth?
Are our fictions the ones we create to make sense of the world in which we live in?
isn't it good to know, jodi, that we don't have to believe one way or another?
ReplyDeleteYes ... and that in itself is a challenge!
ReplyDeleteWhen I retold the story of the broken nose a little while ago, I'm fairly sure that what I put down there was how and what happened ...
ReplyDeleteThing is though, with the amnesia I suffered from the hit, I still haven't a clue about which of those memories are true memories and which are reconstruction ...
Memory works strangely sometimes :-)