memory

I’ve spent the last two weeks slowly loading my cd collection onto my new ipod. Doing so has given me the opportunity to listen to quite a few cd’s that have spent the past couple of years pushed into the back of my entertainment center. One such cd is U2’s Achtung Baby. What a great cd. I put it in and immeadiately I was transported back to the fall of 1991 - driving back home from college on a friday afternoon to see my girlfriend. Windows down, volume up, singing at the top of my lungs, and driving way too fast. It’s incredible the way that hearing those songs again took me back to a specific moment in time.

I’ve always described myself as having a poor memory. There are large chunks of my life that kind of exist as a blur in my head. No details. Just broad, half-remembered strokes. But then something will happen - I’ll hear a particular song - and stuff will come back in spades. So I’ve decided, it’s not that I have a bad memory - it’s that my memory requires sensory triggers. And not just music.

I used to be involved with this girl who always used dove body wash. Whenever I smell dove body wash to this day, I get overwhelmed with memories of this girl. I start to remember being close with her. Touching her skin. Laying in bed, sniffing her neck. And then I start to ache inside.

It works with my sight too. Recently I was on a website that catalogues old comic book covers. I saw one particular cover - an old issue of a book called The Avengers that I owned when I was a kid. I hadn’t seen or thought about the cover in decades. But the second I saw it, I was transported back to the floor of my parent’s living room - comic books spread out on the floor around me like the skeleton of some pre-historic bird. Lost in melodrama and fist-fights.

It makes me wonder about traditions. Like communion inside of the Christian church. According to the Bible, Jesus gave his disciples bread and wine and told them to remember him every time they ate it. As if he knew that the best way to affect a memory is to tie it to the senses. The feel of bread in the hand becomes a reminder of his body. The redness in a glass of wine represents the redness of blood. A morbid and strange analogy from the outside, I’m sure. But one tied to the core of how our brains work, I think.