Different chapter, same book: the power of memory

We are constructed from memories.  We are making new ones every second.  How, what and why do we remember some things and not others?  Memories are a treasure trove of data, sensory experiences, adventures and emotions that we can process, translate and re-invent to create new stories.  

When the present becomes the past, our perception of the experience changes, undergoing a mysterious transformation.  Often it is only in hindsight that we appreciate the value of what has gone before. Regeneration is about change and transformation, and we are all – like Dr Who! - regenerating constantly.

These issues are explored in the amazing Life after Life by Kate Atkinson, which I would recommend to everyone - especially if you are a writer.  In this story, the heroine is born, dies and is reborn many times, each life different, although sharing common threads.  (It reminded me of some of the ideas in the film Sliding Doors - the consequences of one action compared to another.  How the same story can have different endings, or different stories, the same conclusion). Is there such a thing as fate or is life simply a sequence of random events? 

You can check out my review of Life after Life and many others here.  It always fascinates how stories can be so differently perceived by different readers. It's one of the challenges - and magic - of being an author. 
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16181718-life-after-life

Sci-fi visionary Philip. K Dick is another writer who shares my obsession with the nature and construct of memory, a topic he explores in so many of his stories. It was a theme that haunted and obsessed him.

Does memory re-visit the past or simply re-construct it?  Is memory life itself? Is life, memory?

These are questions I keep asking.  Can we ever know the answer? 

Related posts:

http://janeayres.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/picking-flowers.html
http://janeayres.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/life-stories.html

Picking Flowers and Childhood Memories

I’m still in reflective mood after my previous post. Yesterday I went for a run.  I only started running again last week, after recovering finally from two debilitating chest infections which led to my asthma worsening.  Running provides a structure and routine that I lack in pretty much most aspects of my life, including writing.  Especially writing.

It was good to feel the warmth of the sun, at last, and for the first time in ages my feet found a rhythm again and I was able to relax. Noticing all the flowers in bloom, I was transported back to childhood, walking home from school across the field and picking wild flowers to take back to my Gran. Everyone walked to school in the 1960s and 70s.  My parents didn’t even get a car until the early 70s, but even when more people had cars, the thought of being dropped off by your Mum at school was definitely not cool!  As kids, we were all far more independent, thank goodness.  

Anyway, back to the flowers.  Lots of yellows; coltsfoot, celandine, pale mustard, dandelions (which for some reason we thought made you wet the bed), golden buttercups, and a sweet pea-like flower that when paired with purple clover we called egg and bacon. Another purple flower, delicate and intricate, which I think we called vetch, was popular with red ants and you had to be careful to brush the angry insects off when you plucked it from the grass.  Daisies grew in every patch of green. Wild flowers were abundant then.

As Mum and Dad both worked, my brother and I had breakfast and lunch with my Gran, or Nanny, as we called both our grandmothers then. Ethel was my Mum’s Mum, a matriarchal figure who had given birth to 15 children, all at home (which for the first three children was a barge on the river Nene).  I used to be fascinated by her long silky grey hair; it reached right down to her waist in a long plait, which she wound around her head.  She had been born in 1900, and I marvelled at the things she must have seen, living through two wars, and enduring endless hardships and challenges. I wanted to know about her past, her childhood, and I was always full of questions which she seemed bemused by.  Why did it matter?  It was past, done.  Life was about the present. She just got on with it. When we lost her to bowel cancer, well into her eighties, she had never spent a day in hospital and passed away in the council house where she had brought up her large family and lived in most of her life. Those women were made of strong stuff.

So, I started out this post running and then moved on to the death of my Nan. That’s what fascinates me about the way memories work and how they are triggered.  I run outside, I see wild flowers, they remind me of childhood and I am back in Nanny’s kitchen presenting her with yet another straggly bunch of wild blooms which she puts in water in a reused jam jar.  And as I write, I am crying for what has been lost.

Not long after Nan’s passing, I wrote my second children’s book, Wild Horse Island, and she found her way into the story – a different version of her, but with the same heart.  She reappears in a more recent book, Always in my Heart.  A writer can immortalise that which is precious.

We are constructed from memories.  We are making new ones every second.  How, what and why we remember some things and not others is a mysterious process.  I’ve mentioned before the visionary sci-fi writer Philip K. Dick, who was obsessed with the concept of memory and explores it in much of his huge body of work.  I can really relate to this.  As writers, our memories are a treasure trove of data, sensory experiences, adventures and emotions that we can process, translate and re-invent to create new stories. 

Related posts:
http://janeayres.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/run-wild-run-free-memories-imagination.html
http://janeayres.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/my-first-pony-and-remembering.html

http://janeayres.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/thinking.html

http://janeayres.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/nigella-lawson-and-me.html

http://janeayres.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/leaving-footprints.html

http://janeayres.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/writing-routines-and-running.html

http://janeayres.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/writing-in-cupboard.html

http://janeayres.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/running-writing-and-living.html

http://janeayres.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/running-cats-and-writers-block.html

Slaves to the machines?

The sci-fi writer Isaac Asimov spoke of the concept of Singularity – the evolution of man and machine to form a new being, resulting from the rewiring of our brains as the result of the way we use and develop technology.

We are slaves to our machines.  I think Asimov would enjoy the irony of that.

Can you imagine life before computers?  Before mobile phones?  Before phones? Before TV?

Machines are writer’s friends in so many ways – they have provided us with so many opportunities to create work and get it published and accessible.  I remember typewriters, and the frustration of typing out a novel, using copious amounts of tippex, to realise that actually I need to move Chapter 2 to the end of the book.  Which often meant typing the whole lot out again.  Planning was essential in those days, using paper and pen to map out the structure.  It changed the creative process.

I love the flexibility of word processors and the way I can contact people using email.  The internet provides me with a 24 hour library for research.  But I do often feel like I am chained to my machines – the slavery of my own making.  After all, we do have choices.  But I also worry about the addictive nature of much of our digital technology, and the way we depend so much upon it.

I’ve always had a fascination with robotics and the way that we use machines and how we allow them to take over our lives. And the way that visionary writers such as Asimov and Philip K. Dick imagined futures that are genuinely prophetic.

I wonder what the future holds – will we become further fused with our machines or will there be a backlash? Is the tyranny of technology a double edged sword?

Check out some great articles on the topic here:

http://www.scienceomega.com/article/359/artificial-intelligence-from-fantasy-to-reality?utm_source=MailingList&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=ScienceOmega_2012Top10

http://www.scienceomega.com/article/856/robotics-and-the-human-brain-nothing-like-the-movies?utm_source=MailingList&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=ScienceOmega120312

Related posts:
http://janeayres.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/are-novels-getting-weirder.html
http://janeayres.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/on-books-digital-landscape-and-bigger.html
http://janeayres.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/on-connections.html