One of my friends asked me this evening to write something “bonito” when I got home from work. Unfortunately, I am not particularly inspired just now. Nevertheless, I am quite interested in the relationship between memory and perspective — how each act of remembering is an independent experience unto itself, and how any given memory is an ongoing process that is transformed over time and is conditioned by one’s perspective (and vice versa). In other words, there are memories of memories of memories that evolve, decay, or mold into one apparently constant memory. This is much like the way that our physical exterior follows a degree of constancy of form over time, while in reality its actual cellular make-up is in continuous flux. We think of an ever-changing remembrance as one single memory just as we think of a person’s life-span as belonging to one distinct individual.
While I have been working on various pieces related to these topics, instead of posting something fairly unfinished, I decided to post these beautiful lyrics from this song by Lyle Lovett that touch on memory and perspective:
If You Were To Wake Up
Lyle Lovett
If you were to wake up
And I were beside you
Would you gently smile dear
And whisper my name
And would you remember
The way that I held you
And would you want me
To hold you againTime reaches to you
Just like a willow
That bends to the water
And clings to the shore
And there was a time dear
That once you did love me
And there was a time
You loved me no moreRain on your window
Light on your pillow
The way you lie sleeping
Is it like before
For there was a time dear
That once you did love me
And there was a time
You loved me no more
Grave Error 