11 May 2006

I've been editing editing editing. And working on some fiction-prose stuff. And making picures. So not so many poems, unless the fiction-prose things are poems. Or the pictures are.

Lots of discussions with friends and with Mark about bodies and space. It's not a new topic but new to me. Gestural Memory, kinetic memory--most of what I can find to read on these subjects is focused on how bodies react to trauma. Psychophysiology. Slighly more new-agey--"cellular memory."

But what about memory based in not necessarily traumatic movement? I mean beyond the fact that sitting in chairs at the computer gives us bad posture. Or that repeated eka pada paschimotanasanas will help your...hips (?)

3 comments:

Jessica Smith said...

i rarely read this one. why, i don't know. sometimes it makes me uncomfortable.

all memory is kinetic memory in that there is no mind-body split.

it needn't be "traumatic" unles it's, like, traumatic on the cellular level in that something (cells? chemicals? molecules? synapses? i dunno) are realigned.

K. Lorraine Graham said...

"it needn't be "traumatic" unles it's, like, traumatic on the cellular level in that something (cells? chemicals? molecules? synapses? i dunno) are realigned."

Yeah, but a lot of the research is focused on trauma and doesn't investigate non-traumatic memory.

Most of my memory is sound-based, or tactile. The sound of a lawn mower, river, the feel of mud.

"i rarely read this one. why, i don't know. sometimes it makes me uncomfortable." You mean this blog? One of my main goals in writing is to make myself uncomfortable, or rather, to write things that perpetually push my own buttons....

Jessica Smith said...

"Yeah, but a lot of the research is focused on trauma and doesn't investigate non-traumatic memory."

Is that true? What about investigations into Alzheimers? Or--the loss of normal memory? Also into how one learns--that's research into memory.

you want my pseudo-Derrida feed? memory is arche-writing. arche-writing is violent. violence is traumatic. thus all memory is traumatic.

i guess that deflates the idea of trauma, but it's also sort of true because traumatic memory is like other normal memory on steroids. more detailed; recalled with less prompting; instinctive (supposedly formed in the hippocampus)

"Most of my memory is sound-based, or tactile. The sound of a lawn mower, river, the feel of mud."

Do you think that has to do with your musical training or vice-versa (your musical talent stems from the same patterns of mental organization)?

My memory tends to be taste/smell and color (not shape, even, so much as seeing a color that reminds me of another color)

i started trying to write down every memory i had--trying to archive everything in there, like a brain scan. it's interesting because some mnemonic devices work for some things but not for others. i can't "get to" all the files with the same methods. it's like for every file of memory there's a different key.

"i rarely read this one. why, i don't know. sometimes it makes me uncomfortable."

yes, this blog. i think to be made uncomfortable is ultimately good, and what i look for as a reader. however, as a reader i can also regulate when and how much i read :)