Memory has become a vestigial organ like the appendix, that wiggly finger off the intestine that they think was there to help process raw food. Now that food comes basically pre-chewed, Appendix sits there, lonely pinkie of the innards, ready to explode all over its internalized uselessness.
Does Memory do the same in the brain? Are the rampages of our serial killers and mass murderers mental explosions, due to forgetting memory, not using mind’s capacity to remember, losing mental footing in the unforgiving quicksand that is reality 21st-century-style, the machine gun in your hand like a clicker in front of the TV screen?
This hoary pyrotechnique has been brought to you by the seat of your pants and my favorite Lyn Hejinian dictum: Writing Is an Aid to Memory (Sun & Moon Classics, 1996 - compare prices to buy the book). As opposed to, say, Plato, who in Phaedrus (compare prices to buy the book) has Socrates tell the story of the Invention of Writing. Thoth shows his hieroglyphs to Ammon, who replies, “This discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls, because they will not use their Memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember themselves.”*
The battle over writ/spoke, text in hand as prop or homage, poem working on page or stage, rages. Let’s breathe hot oxygen on the conflagration with this handy-dandy how-to, Step-by-Step By Heart.
