Dancing Fish and Ammonites A Memoir by Penelope Lively

Author:Penelope Lively [Lively, Penelope]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2014-02-06T00:00:00+00:00

Memory

A couple of years ago, Izzy yearned for an old-fashioned manual typewriter: “Vintage!” A Smith Corona was found off eBay, and she rejoiced in it until a new ribbon became necessary, and then no one could work out how to change the ribbon. I was summoned: “I can’t believe we’re going to Granny for technical support.” I sat at the machine, looked, did not know how it was done, but lo! my fingers did. They remembered. You lifted out the old reel, put the new one on, thus, you slotted the ribbon through there, and there, pushed that lever, wound the end of the ribbon round the empty reel and caught it on that prong. There! My brain hadn’t remembered, but my fingers had – veterans of manual typewriters. That was how it felt, anyway.

This is an instance of what is called procedural memory, that aspect of memory whereby we remember how to do something. How to ride a bicycle is the example frequently cited, but I prefer my typewriter experience, or Vladimir Nabokov’s of pushing a pram, he being that most refined authority on memory: “You know, I still feel in my wrists certain echoes of the pram-pusher’s knack, such as, for example, the glib downward pressure one applied to the handle in order to have the carriage tip up and climb the curb.” Yes, yes – and a sensation alien to those who have known only the abrupt tilt required for the strollers of today. My first pram, as a very young mother, was one of those sleek majestic cruisers, and my wrists too respond.

There is procedural memory, and then there is semantic memory, which enables us to know that this thing with two wheels is a bike, and that object is a typewriter – the memory facility that retains facts, language, all forms of knowledge without reference to context. And finally, and crucially, there is episodic or autobiographical memory, which gives the context, reminds me that my student bike was dark blue with my initials painted in white, that the baby in the sleek pram once grabbed the shopping, and squeezed ripe tomatoes all over everything. Autobiographical memory is random, nonsequential, capricious, and without it we are undone.

Much of what goes on in the mind is recollection, memory. This is not thought – it is an involuntary procession of images, ranging from yesterday to long ago, interspersed with more immediate signals like: must remember to phone so-and-so, or, what shall I have for lunch? Pure thought is something else – it requires conscious effort and is hard to achieve. The Borges story about the boy cursed – not blessed, cursed – with total recall, with a memory of everything, demonstrates how punishing that would be, how he remembers “not only every leaf of every tree in every patch of forest, but every time he had perceived or imagined that leaf.” And, crucially, he did not think: “To think is to ignore (or forget) differences, to generalize, to abstract.

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