The Art of Remembering
I feel sorry for those who have never had a memory shape their present reality. In this life we carry but one soul through one existence (at least in this cycle), and all we have ever known and experienced is what takes us through the years shaping our interactions, relationships, and awareness. The role we play has somewhat been assigned, but it is in the search to distinguish and decipher our moments of living which makes everything valuable. If we are lucky we will let this mind go beyond the shroud of civilization, transcending notions of who we are and what we ought to be.
There is no sense in sticking to archetypes. If they merely help us make sense of our surroundings then our surroundings are not truth at all. Instead, they are an agreement of a people to keep an order and system well oiled and constantly working toward death. There is no life in a system of agreements.
Huxley writes, "We live together, we act on, and react to, one another; but always and in all circumstances we are by ourselves. The martyrs go hand in hand into the arena; they are crucified alone." This is to say that to break from the agreement may mean certain death for those who sneak outside.
It is in this spirit that Edmund White writes, "I have remembered everything." And it is in this endeavor, to set down on paper "everything," which makes his work a graceful ascent into truth and fiction.
Last night I began reading White's A Boy's Own Storypartly out of recommendation from a brother, and partly out of hypnosis from the cover. The front cover of the Modern Library's 20th century edition features a young White, maybe 6 or 7, getting into a car, but before he does poses for a picture in which he has not opened the door yet, and is looking over his shoulder at the camera, operated, I assume, by a family member. (Perhaps his father?) The cover has been staring at me since its arrival in our library some weeks ago. (On the heel of our school's librarian asking me for suggestions regarding graphic novels, I asked her to also order several books, one of which was White's novel). So when it arrived and was placed on the "new arrival" pedestal, it peaked my interest. Why had I asked her to order this? Because I have felt the power of literature to connect us to distant times and places, I believe there is an energy which accompanies sharing stories. So it was that I hoped this novel, which I had never read, would someday speak to a deserving reader. But still...
And the cover greeted me every morning I stumbled into work, and let me pass every night at quitting time. The boy on the cover is apprehensive to get into the car. Yet he is not afraid. Unlike the narrative White presents of himself as a child: weak, timid, a "sissy" whose "hands were always in the air," and "afraid of everything," the picture on the cover is not weak. The boy is staring straight down the lens of the camera and is almost defying the moment which will live forever on film as he gets into the car for a new destination. One has to assume that this picture was taken in Kodak's shining moment. When cameras were status symbols and families used them to preserve not only themselves in antiquity, but their images and posturing to the world.
The boy's casual and innocent posture is introspective and strong. He is taking in this moment before moving on. Perhaps the pause is to fully grasp what he is leaving. Unlike the mountain stance in hatha yoga, the boy is not planting his feet firmly on the ground (he still has his youthful awkward clumsiness about him: one pant leg rolled up, over size shoes), but has rather put his strength into his awareness of his body and his surroundings. His stare into the camera is old and wise, and his face is either halfway to a grin, or due to the sun, is shutting the eyes mindful of its protective darkness. The face is that of a man who understands there is a long haul in front of him.
White's intimacy with the reader is what makes this such a haunting read. He seems to remember EVERYTHING. Though quite possibly a trick of the memoir trade, I don't really care. One beautiful episode comes through when a young White finds himself in need of communication with his father, who is mostly a distant, workaholic, alpha-male: everything White jr. is not. White describes the nightly meetings they had, when his father switched from his habitual cigar to a pipe; the hour white described as "the pipe hour was the time to approach him for a favor or just a few pleasant words; I'd sit on the loveseat beside his blond mahogany desk and watch him work. Hour after hour he wrote with an onyx fountain pen in lowercase block letters that had the angle and lean elegance of Art Deco design; his smoke drifted up through the rosy light cast by the matching red shades on floor stands that flanked the desk." This is where he "fell in love" with his father. Where he recognized his need for him and his world of nightly music, smoke, and work. The smoke provided a protective shield from which he could rely upon for protection as he let his mind wonder with the sounds coming from the "Meissen phonograph." Sweet sounds indeed.
The communication through music is a memorable passage, and needs to be recounted here:
"His real love was the late Brahms, the piano Intermezzi and especially the two clarinet sonatas. These pieces, as unpredictable as thought and as human as conversation, filled the house night after night. He could not have liked them as background music to work to, since their abrupt changes of volume and dynamics must have made them too arresting to dismiss. I never showered with my dad, I never saw him naked, not once, but we did immerse ourselves, side by side, in those passionate streams every night. As he worked at his desk and I sat on his couch, reading or daydreaming, we bathed in music. Did he feel the same things I felt? Perhaps I ask this because now that he is dead I fear we shared nothing and my long captivity in his house represented to him only a slight inconvenience, a major expense, a fair to middling disappointment, but I like to think that music spoke to us in similar ways and acted as the source and transcript of a shared rapture. I feel sorry for a man who never wanted to go to bed with his father; when the father dies, how can his ghost get warm except in a posthumous embrace? For that matter, how does the survivor get warm?"
And that is only page 22.
There is no sense in sticking to archetypes. If they merely help us make sense of our surroundings then our surroundings are not truth at all. Instead, they are an agreement of a people to keep an order and system well oiled and constantly working toward death. There is no life in a system of agreements.
Huxley writes, "We live together, we act on, and react to, one another; but always and in all circumstances we are by ourselves. The martyrs go hand in hand into the arena; they are crucified alone." This is to say that to break from the agreement may mean certain death for those who sneak outside.
It is in this spirit that Edmund White writes, "I have remembered everything." And it is in this endeavor, to set down on paper "everything," which makes his work a graceful ascent into truth and fiction.
Last night I began reading White's A Boy's Own Storypartly out of recommendation from a brother, and partly out of hypnosis from the cover. The front cover of the Modern Library's 20th century edition features a young White, maybe 6 or 7, getting into a car, but before he does poses for a picture in which he has not opened the door yet, and is looking over his shoulder at the camera, operated, I assume, by a family member. (Perhaps his father?) The cover has been staring at me since its arrival in our library some weeks ago. (On the heel of our school's librarian asking me for suggestions regarding graphic novels, I asked her to also order several books, one of which was White's novel). So when it arrived and was placed on the "new arrival" pedestal, it peaked my interest. Why had I asked her to order this? Because I have felt the power of literature to connect us to distant times and places, I believe there is an energy which accompanies sharing stories. So it was that I hoped this novel, which I had never read, would someday speak to a deserving reader. But still...
And the cover greeted me every morning I stumbled into work, and let me pass every night at quitting time. The boy on the cover is apprehensive to get into the car. Yet he is not afraid. Unlike the narrative White presents of himself as a child: weak, timid, a "sissy" whose "hands were always in the air," and "afraid of everything," the picture on the cover is not weak. The boy is staring straight down the lens of the camera and is almost defying the moment which will live forever on film as he gets into the car for a new destination. One has to assume that this picture was taken in Kodak's shining moment. When cameras were status symbols and families used them to preserve not only themselves in antiquity, but their images and posturing to the world.
The boy's casual and innocent posture is introspective and strong. He is taking in this moment before moving on. Perhaps the pause is to fully grasp what he is leaving. Unlike the mountain stance in hatha yoga, the boy is not planting his feet firmly on the ground (he still has his youthful awkward clumsiness about him: one pant leg rolled up, over size shoes), but has rather put his strength into his awareness of his body and his surroundings. His stare into the camera is old and wise, and his face is either halfway to a grin, or due to the sun, is shutting the eyes mindful of its protective darkness. The face is that of a man who understands there is a long haul in front of him.
White's intimacy with the reader is what makes this such a haunting read. He seems to remember EVERYTHING. Though quite possibly a trick of the memoir trade, I don't really care. One beautiful episode comes through when a young White finds himself in need of communication with his father, who is mostly a distant, workaholic, alpha-male: everything White jr. is not. White describes the nightly meetings they had, when his father switched from his habitual cigar to a pipe; the hour white described as "the pipe hour was the time to approach him for a favor or just a few pleasant words; I'd sit on the loveseat beside his blond mahogany desk and watch him work. Hour after hour he wrote with an onyx fountain pen in lowercase block letters that had the angle and lean elegance of Art Deco design; his smoke drifted up through the rosy light cast by the matching red shades on floor stands that flanked the desk." This is where he "fell in love" with his father. Where he recognized his need for him and his world of nightly music, smoke, and work. The smoke provided a protective shield from which he could rely upon for protection as he let his mind wonder with the sounds coming from the "Meissen phonograph." Sweet sounds indeed.
The communication through music is a memorable passage, and needs to be recounted here:
"His real love was the late Brahms, the piano Intermezzi and especially the two clarinet sonatas. These pieces, as unpredictable as thought and as human as conversation, filled the house night after night. He could not have liked them as background music to work to, since their abrupt changes of volume and dynamics must have made them too arresting to dismiss. I never showered with my dad, I never saw him naked, not once, but we did immerse ourselves, side by side, in those passionate streams every night. As he worked at his desk and I sat on his couch, reading or daydreaming, we bathed in music. Did he feel the same things I felt? Perhaps I ask this because now that he is dead I fear we shared nothing and my long captivity in his house represented to him only a slight inconvenience, a major expense, a fair to middling disappointment, but I like to think that music spoke to us in similar ways and acted as the source and transcript of a shared rapture. I feel sorry for a man who never wanted to go to bed with his father; when the father dies, how can his ghost get warm except in a posthumous embrace? For that matter, how does the survivor get warm?"
And that is only page 22.
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