The strong link between memory and emotion evoked in earlier posts led me to Dylan Evans' Emotion: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2003), a mad dash through evolution and culture, observing various clues and passing furry fellow creatures, computers and robots along the way.
If emotion "colors" memory, actual colors radiate influence on emotions, moods and choices. As does food intake -- the full range, from coffee and alcohol to spices, chocolate, sugar, hallucinogens and everything in between.
Among humans, moods and emotions transcend specific cultures, groups and societies, though culture may inform how we respond to them, or display/hide them.
Basic emotions include joy, distress, anger, fear, surprise and disgust (Evans, page 5) and later evolutionary additions: love, guilt, shame, pride, embarrassment, envy and jealousy (Ditto, page 21). Evans contends with each, considering why they may have developed.
From the strength of his examples and from my own observations, I concur with nearly all of Evans' take on things. Some things remain open-ended, though, persisting as mysteries.
One conclusion is this: In our existential decision-making, our choosing what to do next, it's clear that emotional calibration is as key a component as logical calculation. The main thing is to be aware of emotional state, mood, and context -- if there's time to be aware. In some situations, snap decisions must be made: fight or flight in the blink of an eye, or by "instinct."
A typical writing prompt: Write about a time when you found yourself in a profoundly altered mood or emotional state. How did it feel?
This popcorn and cotton candy documentary doesn't do much, but it's still a fun little romp through the Velvet Underground's discography. Key players John Cale and Lou Reed do not appear for interviews; these are left to others like drummer Mo Tucker and later addition Doug Yule.
Like time spent with an old friend, it's worth watching The Velvet Underground: Under Review (2006) if you dig the Velvets. Hard to determine who directed this, part of a British series.
Some of the great Velvet Underground tracks:
I'm Waiting for the Man Femme Fatale Venus in Furs All Tomorrow's Parties Heroin There She Goes Again I'll Be Your Mirror White Light/White Heat Sister Ray What Goes On Some Kinda Love Beginning to See the Light That's the Story of My Life Sweet Jane Rock & Roll
What am I missing here? John Cale gave the band its initially dark, super-cool sound, and Lou Reed's lyrics tend to stick in the memory. I often think of Reed phrasing. Two lines in particular:
I could sleep for a thousand years (Venus in Furs)
This, my friends, is what a crazy anarchist movie looks like. Take the Marx Brothers' Duck Soup (1933) -- shot during the Great Depression -- and mix in Jean-Luc Godard's Tout va bien / Everything's Fine (1972) with Luis Buñuel's Le Fantôme de la liberté / The Phantom of Liberty (1974) and class-conscious British sitcoms of the 1970s, with an added dash of horror, fantasy and science fiction, plus Robert Altman and voilà, presto -- there you have it.
Hotel Britannia (1982) is neither good for casual entertainment, nor is it the first Lindsay Anderson film to check out. As Anderson himself put it (quoted in the twelve-minute extra featuring Malcolm McDowell): "you need a strong sense of humor to understand the satire in Britannia Hospital." That said, it's very relevant for a sharper understanding of the dramatic global happenings of 2011.
The initial release of Britannia Hospital fared well in France, but it suffered from terrible timing on its release in the UK (thanks to the nationalistic, jingoistic and xenophobic enthusiasm of the Falklands/Malvinas War managed by Margaret Thatcher). In the USA, Ronald Reagan was in power, gearing up with his own foreign adventures. Today's underlying economic inequities were reinforced just then, as Anderson clearly observed. But Anderson's critique, along with others, largely fell on deaf ears thanks to the draw of unleashed greed and the pursuit of power. It's quite an interesting film, albeit with an ick factor and a slapstick feel, not too far off from the Pink Panther films. Its themes go deep, and its critique of class, power and the human condition cuts deep, as well.
Snippets of Britannia Hospital such as this brief one may be more evocative than the film as a whole. This one's very telling as to Lindsay's Anderson's worldview.
I. So, I'm born into this calendar system and have been using it for as long as I can remember, the one that says this year is 2011. That is, Anno Domini 2011, A.D. 2011, 2011 A.D., In the Year of the Lord 2011. It often strikes me as weird and a little off-putting. I faithfully date checks, documents, diary entries, blog posts and so on using this scheme, because most of the people I interact with use it, too. But what's it all about?
II. Where's a calendar to start? With the emperor's ascension to the throne, the queen's coronation day, the start of the Revolution, the birth of a religious figure, or from the date of some Earth-changing event?
III. One thing to note about the A.D./B.C. (Before Christ) dating system is that it's off kilter. Almost nobody (among scholars and religious experts) believes that Jesus Christ was born on this coming Christmas Day 2011 years ago. In fact, there is no exact consensus of birth date. Estimates now range from 2 "B.C." to as far back as 18 "B.C.," with death (in human form) dating to between 29 and 36 A.D. In other words, "all that seems solid melts into air" once carefully considered. No wonder, as the cliché goes, ignorance is bliss!
IV. In the B.C./A.D. system, there is no Year Zero. As constructed, the years flip from 1 B.C. to 1 A.D. This is truly a strange system for thinking about -- or even trying to grasp -- chronological time.
V. How often do we deliberately "do" a countdown in modern life?
a. New Year's Eve, countdown to the next year. b. Sporting events. c. Medical/scientific events. d. Ultimata (ultimatums). d. Blasting off: rockets and spaceships.
The last image has me imagining the countdown from B.C. to A.D., to the moment when Jesus blasts off into the Heavens! (The Ascension pictured above: circa A.D. 1410, Les Très Riches Heures du duc de Berry)
3 B.C., 2 B.C., 1 B.C. We have lift-off . . .
Except the Ascension is estimated to have occurrred somewhere between A.D. 30 and 36.
VI. I was earlier imagining Jesus blasting off by jetpack, but it turns out there's already a Jetpack Jesus action figure! Besides which, neither God nor the Son of God need technology to perform miracles, right?
"It's Christ who climbs to the sky better than any pilot / He holds the world record for altitude" -- Guillaume Apollinaire, "Zone" (trans. Charlotte Mandell) from Alcools, 1913.
A lot of strong memories were given their initial big bang coding by heightened emotion. So-called flashbulb memories are one type, and collective flashbulb memories find additional reinforcement through shared recollections. The JFK assassination for those old enough to remember. The MLK assassination. Landing on the Moon, walking on the Moon. The tail end of the US-Vietnam War. Watergate. Oil embargo. Iran Hostage Crisis. And on and on up to the rolling present.
Interest reinforces memory. During a year in grade school when living in St. Paul, Minnesota, in the fall of 1968, my school held a mock election, which got me interested in presidential elections. Vice President Hubert Horatio Humphrey, Jr., was closely associated with Minnesota, and most kids voted for him in our election. Most dissenters voted for Richard Milhous Nixon, with only a couple for George Wallace (kids orginally from Tennessee). No doubt most of us were voting the way our parents would in the real election. Humphrey won Minnesota but Nixon won at the national level. I remember every presidential election night since 1968.
Sports memory works in the same way, at least for the big series and the big wins of favorite teams. It's all about the intensity of interest fusing with emotional excitement/investment, taking purchase in our memory system.
Anything intense tends to persist somewhere in the "memory banks."Good when it's good, "post-traumatic" when it's traumatic.
For the quieter developments in life (and even for intense social connections maintained through time), artifacts like diaries, journals, receipts, photos, recordings, souvenirs, letters and postcards bring the times back: tokens of remembrance, objets de mémoire. They also help when the details of memories blur. How cool is that?
Why is it difficult to recall, in later life, memories encoded from birth until about age three or four? We probably can remember, but we cannot translate our memories into something understandable to our current self-state. So, we may often be recalling -- or dreaming of -- swirls of colors, noises, scents, voice sounds, music, light and dark, touch, taste, texture, temperature shifts first experienced as "babes in the woods." We just can't make heads or tails of these memories as such now. Or perhaps we blend them or mix them into other, more patterned memories constucted later. Or, we periodically catch traces similar to seeing earlier writing on palimpsests.
Here I'm just riffing on stuff brought up in Jonathan K. Foster's Memory: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2009). I'm extrapolating, for sure.
I like this Friedrich Nietzsche quote that Foster employs on page 62: "The existence of forgetting has never been proved: we only know that some things don't come to mind when we want them to."
"Remembering the future" is not really gone into by Foster, except for déjà vu experiences. I like the Cassandra idea, prophets and tea leaves, time as alinear, nonlinear or translinear. Right now, I'm guessing all of the main Republican presidential candidates are remembering a future in which they occupy the White House. Maybe there are alternate tracks in which this is true.
As far as historical memory, what I find bizarre is the whole A.D./B.C. chronological scheme -- it seems absurd, counting down the B.C. years toward zero and up from zero for the A.D. years. More confusing than helpful, really. Maybe it's supposed to be confusing.
About halfway into Jonathan K. Foster's Memory: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2009). So far, there's not a whole lot that anyone reading this doesn't already know about, at least generally. But it's fascinating anyway. Memory opens up everything.
I'm guessing that we tend to underestimate how much of a guiding role memory plays every single day . . . and night.
Memory operates on different levels.
Typical day: doing just about anything, we draw on cruise control memory, auto-pilot memory, GPS memory. Sometimes we forget what we normally remember - like keys, or where we parked, or a phone number. Then we go into manual mode, overriding the automated system. Consciously thinking about it! Making an active effort to recall and retrieve the memory! After praying to Saint Anthony or just focusing a little or using some fuzzy logic, or mentally retracing or reconstructing our steps, we remember -- voila. Eureka.
Then there's periodic recall or forgetting: we forget passwords that we don't use often. Fine. So we reset them or remeber them after being promoted by stored "hints." But there are so many passwords to remember, perhaps, that it's not long before we are confused all over again. Pretty typical.
Then there's memory fueled by emotion -- bigger stuff than the above. More on that, probably, in the next post. Once I've turned some more pages of the memory book.
