On reading and memory
22/06/2011
Have you guys listened to Radiolab? I love it; it’s a pastiche of pop science, psychology and music. They have a great episode on the nature of memory. Apparently the less you access your memories, the more intact they remain. If you mull over past events, you change them – they become fictionalised, cross-pollinated with other memories, TV shows, anecdotes. They are unreliable. Which is why I love reading these old books so much – there are those pictures, the same pictures I had in my head when I was eight. I can revisit a former, purer version of myself.
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LET ME BE FRANK 
What a lovely description of memory…
Surely the best memories are the ones you make up
I loved this book too! I am all inspired to hunt it out again and Tom’s Midnight Garden and oh so many more!
isn’t that the thing about memory though – a big messy labyrinth – as you so wonderfully draw it, Sarah. What a strange concept – pure memory. Because if we don’t access them, then are they even memories? I shall have to listen to the radiolab session..
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