Memory & Imagination

The idea of using the Greek goddess of memory for the title of this blog comes from my work with the texts of Terayama Shuji and his exploration of memory, in particular his work Den’en ni Shisu.

Memories are never non-fiction. The moment we are separated from an event in our lives by time and space, it becomes a collection of subjectively gathered sensations. These sensory details, like seeds in soil, grow and morph with time into fictions that serve different functions in our psychological landscape. Some memories comfort, others inspire, others provide ammunition for domestic arguments—there are as many functions for memory as there are human actions. The remarkable thing is that this morphing is involuntarily, generally happening on a subconscious level. We often believe that what we remember is fact, and not fiction. Journalists make a living selling their memories as non-fiction. Nevertheless, I think it’s important to accept that all writing in fact is derived from memory, and that everything that comes to us through the printed medium must be recognized as such.

So as I offer up this record, I claim that essentially it does not matter whether a memory is true or not. What does matter is how memories inspire the imagination.