Take one memory
We watched the film After Life at the weekend, and I really loved it. The film’s premise is that people who have recently died arrive at a slightly derelict institution, where they must — with the help of an advisor — decide on the one memory that they will take with them to the afterlife. Everything else will be forgotten, and they will live in that memory for ever. At the end of a week, the chosen memory is carefully recreated on video by technicians, and they go off to the afterlife to live in that moment.
Rather than trying to suggest that this is the way things actually are when you die, I felt that the director intended it to stimulate viewers to think about which memory they would take with them, if they were in the same situation. By coincidence, I’m re-reading ‘The Amber Spyglass’ at the moment (the final part of Pullman’s ‘His Dark Materials’ trilogy), and there is a similar idea in that, posed in a different way. So this has been on my mind recently, and I went to bed after the film thinking about memories.
Think about it yourself — picking just one special memory is incredibly difficult. I’ve obviously got a number which are too personal for public broadcast on this blog (ahem), but I thought I’d share a few of the more — how shall I put it? — U Certificate ones with you.
- When I lived in Oxford, I used to enjoy going for strolls in the city’s many parks. One beautiful, sunny, crisp spring day, I was walking in the University Parks, and enjoying the stunning drifts of crocuses. As I turned a corner in the path between some trees, I saw a woman sitting on a bench, enjoying the sunshine. She was probably around 60 years old, with silver-white hair, and was wearing the most incredible tweed suit. The mixture of tweed threads in the weave were exactly the same as the colours of the crocuses carpeting the ground around the bench: magenta, pale butter yellow, cream, violet, purple and saffron orange. Though her chronological age meant she was in the autumn of her life, she was the perfect embodiment of spring. I was so delighted with how perfectly she fitted with her surroundings, and how content she seemed, that I beamed at her, and she smiled back very warmly. I had a camera on me, but was too shy to ask if I could take her photograph.
- One gorgeous summer day, while I was doing my PhD, a group of four of us decided to bunk off, and drive to the Savernake Forest. As we drove with the summer-perfumed air coming in through the windows, we played ‘Wonderful Life’ by Black on the stereo. It’s a bitter-sweet song, and there were particular reasons for all of us to feel the melancholy of the lyrics sharply, but we were alive and free and the sun was shining, and the melancholy just sharpened our happiness. We spent the afternoon in the forest, lying in the warm, dappled grass, chatting idly and lazily watching insects climb the grass stalks.
- Most of my time working on whale watching tours on the Isle of Mull would qualify as a perfect memory.
- Again while whale watching, we had a rough, blustery morning among the islands. Chilled to the bone, and weary from being buffeted about, we landed for a rest on a tiny island near Coll. I lay on the springy, sand-flecked turf, letting the sun sink into my body and warm me. After the morning on the boat, I had the odd impression, looking out to sea, that the sea was steady and our little island was bobbing up and down like a cork. I felt perfectly content, and enjoyed the feeling of knowing exactly where I was. I actually wrote a poem about this a few years later, which I won’t inflict on anyone!
- People in our neighbourhood knew that my family loved animals, and as a consequence, we used to get given half-dead animals (particularly birds) to look after, which had been hit by cars, fallen out of nests, or attacked by cats. Most of these (predictably) didn’t survive the initial injuries or shock, but we had one great success story: Birdy. The unimaginatively named Birdy was a thrush found by a friend after he’d fallen out of a nest in a very tall tree. Birdy survived against the odds, and we raised him to adulthood. We began to take him on little excursions outside, digging over the compost heap to help him find his own worms. One summer day, I was sitting cross-legged in the garden reading, while Birdy perched peaceably on my knee. He was on the cusp of being independent (as was I), but for that moment, we were both content to spend time together.
What would your ‘afterlife memory’ be?
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Strange that the fiercely anti-Christian Pullman should consider the possibility of an afterlife, surely that goes against everything he doesn't believe in!
by Jonathan Briggs @ 13/02/2008 12:04 am • Permalink •
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Read the books first Jonathan, rather than hysterical tabloids or daft evangelicals before criticising him for views he does not express! I think that "His Dark Materials" reveals Pullman as anti-clerical certainly, in a vein similar to Louis Bunuel, but not as a militant atheist like say Richard Dawkins. The books are set in worlds where though all organised religion is corrupt, it is evident that there are mysteries and forces that cannot be either controlled or completely comprehended. That doesn't sounds anti religious to me.
by ThoughtBadger @ 13/02/2008 1:57 am • Permalink •
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... and a lovely piece by the way bsag. Thank you very much.
by ThoughtBadger @ 13/02/2008 2:02 am • Permalink •
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It's an interesting idea, because if you only get to keep the one memory, then you could chose a memory of something which was perfect at the time, but has been tainted by things which have happened since then.
Hmm....
by Clair @ 13/02/2008 9:03 am • Permalink •
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by Jonathan Briggs @ 13/02/2008 2:18 pm • Permalink •
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Loved this post. Wonderful writing and memories.
I saw After Life when it was in the theatres here and loved it as well!
As for my "afterlife memory", I must think on this...
by Debbie @ 14/02/2008 11:03 pm • Permalink •
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Ok, I've chosen one. I think it would be a memory from when I lived back at my childhood home, and my mother and brother were still alive.
I even recall at the time thinking how incredibly happy I was, and how cozy everything seemed (Jim was playing on the piano, my mom was cooking in the kitchen, Dad was on the couch reading the newspaper, and Ruth was playing with a toy I can't recall). I even took a piece of paper and wrote a description of that moment, sealed it in an envelope, and put it away, because I wanted to remember that moment forever.
I have no idea where the envelope is now, of course. And even if I found it, I'm not sure I'd open it; keeping it sealed would feel more like I was protecting it somehow, protecting that innocence.
by Debbie @ 14/02/2008 11:08 pm • Permalink •
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Oh ugh, that was badly written, apologies. But I hope you get the gist of my chosen moment.
by Debbie @ 14/02/2008 11:09 pm • Permalink •
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Jonathan Briggs: Tongue in cheek notwithstanding, I probably didn't help by not explaining the Pullman reference (to avoid spoiling the plot). Actually, one of his points in the Amber Spyglass is that you should life your life fully when you have it, so that you've got something to show for it, because there is no afterlife in the conventional sense of heaven. Apologies for the brevity-induced confusion!
ThoughtBadger: True. Though reading the trilogy again, I think that he is often using fantastical situations to make readers think about the nature of existence. e.g. the witches' very long lifespan meaning that they have fleeting (for them) and heartbreaking relationships with men and with their own sons. And the short lives of the Gallivespians relative to humans makes you think about the urgency of just getting on with life while you have the chance. I could be wrong, of course
And thank you.
Clair: I hadn't thought of it that way.
Debbie: Not badly written at all. That sounds like a wonderful memory. I love the idea of writing those moments down and sealing them away.
by bsag @ 15/02/2008 5:24 pm • Permalink •
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I enjoyed the post. The film sounds a bit like an inverse of "Eternal Sunshine", where the memory is preserved through decision of positive affirmation, rather by than fleeing pervasive negation.
There is a sense in which we are already dead, in this sense, I think. I explain myself- if there was not some eternal content to our experience, a memory which was present in every instance, then we would have to learn not only everything again in every moment, but also how to even begin to 'know' in every moment. Certainly - in this sense, "Habit" takes on the form of eternal memory (although it might change). Probably the best example of this actually happening (rather than just asserted as the necessary condition of the kind of experience we have) is falling in love. At least as I see it, when we fall in love, there is something like the memory of falling in love which becomes fixed, which everything else shows up in terms of. "The tulips are more colourful when you are in love" they say - this is because the memory of falling in love remains with us as a constituent part of the understanding.
Thus, the point of the film, becomes not so much just which memory would you live to eternity, because when a memory is eternal it becomes devoid of content - it rather becomes a constituent of content. In this case, the eternal memory has to be content and form, and I suppose it reaches this by abolishing Kronos (the time of events). This is a reasonable understanding of death I think - vaguely the Christian one, in which human time comes to an end and we live in aeonic time, that doesn't have "events" but rather memories. "Paradise" is therefore almost impossible to think, because we think of it as just a different kind of place that has chronic time but drugs, sex, and rocknroll (and thus the perverse contradiction where Bill Gates prefers the beta version of Hell).
But, I'm ignoring the manifest question: given the film set up, is there a memory I would pick? Well, certainly - teh memory of rapture. I suppose I have to pick some event which causes it, so I'll pick the most crushing "heart is stomped on" memory. I'm not going to go in to it, actually, I'm not sure which one I'd pick but I don't think it's so important if the rapture is the same. My reason would be simply that I have a naive sense of "being alive" in terms of "feeling", in the kind of brute aesthetic sense. And since the strongest impressive force is pain, and the strongest version of it emotional rather than physical (although there is no strict difference, just one of convenience), I would pick the emotional one.
by tristan @ 18/02/2008 4:37 am • Permalink •
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Bloody hell! Metaphysics on a Monday - I can't cope with myself on Mondays, so I try not to think at all...........
by Jonathan Briggs @ 18/02/2008 6:53 pm • Permalink •
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tristan: Interesting ideas. I had a read your comment a few times before I got the idea, but that's my problem not your writing! I'm also interested that you chose what might be considered an unpleasant memory, because it would be stronger. I think I would be too much of a coward to do that, but as you say, the visceral force of it would make you feel alive.
by bsag @ 20/02/2008 7:37 pm • Permalink •
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It would be difficult indeed to just choose some part of your memory when you die but I think I will just choose those memory when time I was born since it would not be difficult to remember anymore those people you care about and your family because if your going to choose such part it would just be painful for you and your life in the next generation would be much of
by Demotivator @ 24/02/2008 5:20 pm • Permalink •
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