Reconstruction of A Memory

How do we distort our memories and how we remember them? Why do we remember colours/events/things incorrect and how do we associate with reality through our memories?

Is remembering possible? If we were able to ‘remember’, we would remember events exactly how they were, but I believe I am with Chris Marker in this case: we do not remember, we rewrite memories. Chris Marker has a monologue in his cult documentary “Sans Soleil”, 

“I’ll have spent my life trying to understand the function of remembering, which is not opposite of forgetting, but rather it's the inner lining. We don’t remember. We rewrite memory much as history is rewritten.” (Marker, 1983)

As an (not) opposite word of remembering, forgetting is an annoying fact of life. According to Richard Morris, forgetting is a necessary part of the memory. The brain forms memories. Brain forms some representations even it isn’t completely accurate, and memory is happening automatically. Brain has a number of different memory systems and millions of cells. He clearly asks, “what might be actually happening when we form a memory?” and he has a biological and scientific explanation. All things start with hippocampus which is placed in the medial temporal lobe, in order to form the connections that enable you to make a lasting memory. This is critical because the information comes into our visual system at the back, or our auditory system, smell system and passes from these sensory systems through various perceptual systems and eventually comes down to hippocampus which is able to connect all this information together. This theory is firstly suggested by Santiago Ramon y Cajal in 1910s and his discovery showed the importance of hippocampus. Also, these connections that the brain makes can be changed in strength as shown in physiological experiments. But at the end of the day, the daily information which does not take critical importance in our minds fades away.

According to researches, we remember easily striking moments, experiencing the emergency, recall its configuration, dynamic structures, or even sketching by a gesture. While recalling an ordinary, unspecified memory from the mind, generally we do not remember in the right way because of the superposing of the systems which connects memory to the hippocampus.

In order to understand all of the many ways we forget things, we need to talk more about how we remember. In our minds, all information is like interpenetrating networks. There are three reasons that make us forget:

- we fail to encode it

- we fail to retrieve it

- we experience storage decay

Psychologist and memory expert Elizabeth Loftus’ works show how eyewitnesses reconstruct their memories after accidents or crimes. These are things we can remember easily and these are “retrieval cues” which you can relate with the information and leads you back to a particular memory. Also, these are named as “context-dependent memories”. The other memories are “state-dependent”, our states and our emotions can also serve as retrieval cues. It is like having a bad headache and calling negative memories and associations. Incorporating misleading information into one’s memory of an event has a different type of indexing: misinformation effect.

Also, we are filling the gaps with reasonable guesses.

There is a lot of reconstruction and inferring involved when we try to flesh out a memory, every time we replay it in our mind or relate it to a friend, it changes. In a way, we’re all sort of perpetually re-writing our pasts. Memory is both a reconstruction and a reproduction of past events. In a way, memories seem to me like Borges’ description of ‘The Book of Sand’: 

“A book that keeps changing. The pages seem to grow from the book. Sections keep being added. Time and time again, entirely new texts and images are combined in new ways.” 

Borges, as already well known by his writings influenced by scientific and philosophic developments, is famous with his infinite loops, maps, labyrinths, libraries, universe. He is eventually also playing with the infinite in the context of labyrinths of the memory and consequences of remembering. he is also metaphorically using insomnia for an excuse of trying to forget himself: forget himself, forget his body, forget everything around him. At the end of the day, we should forget to have more space to make new memories. Not forgetting is a kind of curse, infinite memory is damnation for him.

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remembering and forgetting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVWbrNls-Kw

forgetting is a part of the memory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNyZmSg92HI

this is why your memory sometimes lies to you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaOvWN1Zb0E

(-> Bachelard – Poetics of Space / remembering with the space?

-> Proust's remembrance of things past?)