Well, midterms are around the corner and after having a quick talk today with Tom I can definitely say I feel a lot more confident in my work thus far. All that’s left is to work out the rest of the kinks in my concept and get everything printed.
For quite some time I’ve felt that this work has been forced, perhaps because I am creating in ways I never have before and coming out with a product completely different from my usual work. I was nervous starting this process and wasn’t entirely convinced by it. I spent hours researching, trying to find information to back up my claims. Though getting caught up in the details isn’t necessarily a bad thing, I wound myself up to the point where I was having trouble separating the details in talking about my work. Now that I’ve calmed down a little I can go back and sift through everything I’ve collected and reconsider their meanings in reference to my work.
While roaming Google I came across a book called Self-Identity and Everyday Life by Harvie Ferguson. In his chapter Interruption: Memory he references a quote by Michael de Montaigne-
“…it was so long ago that I cannot remember anything about myself then.”
You’d never see me more thrilled. Here I had been struggling with finding information about loss of memory as a loss of self and here it is! While it’s obviously not stated directly in this quote, it is beautifully implied. While the reading in this specific excerpt is incredibly dense, it’s very interesting and incredibly profound.
“And because memory is always a present experience it is absolutely bound to the flow of time. A memory I am going to have tomorrow will not arrive until that moment; a memory I had yesterday is already in the past and, while I recollect having it, cannot be revisited. But, whenever it comes, and in a remarkable way, memory is completely free from the temporal constraint of immediate experience. We play over the entire range of possible past experiences in recollecting events and incidents; free from the ordering of time’s original flow. And, in fact, we can exercise some limited control and direction over memory and use it deliberatively.” (By the author, 2nd paragraph of the chapter).
I was struggling with the continuation of each piece after the moth makes itself present. In retrospect, I have an incredibly easy time considering these “memories” as free from time’s flow. I like that the moth exists within a space or a “memory” whose “beginning” and “end” are not entirely certain. It exists as a lapse where no certain beginning and end are defined. The change in focus between background and foreground, between moth and memory, reference no specific point and therefore can exist at any “time” within the memory. I also see the moth’s undulating form as relating to mood swings. There is no explanation for how a mood is changed, or no specific point where one can reference a change in mood. It’s a gradual change over time which is perfectly illustrated by the swinging of focus.
Another wonderful quote that helped me ground my concept is taken from the same book:
“It is not Romantic striving or self-realization that actualizes the self; rather it is a recollection of the past for which the present is the culmination.”
Reading this only reinforces my ideas that a loss of memory correlates a loss of self. The awareness of one’s past allows one to exist as who they are in the present. If parts of one’s past are forgotten, could you not agree that part of oneself has been lost along with the memory?
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