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Committing to memory
A tiny Freudian slip, perhaps: Stacey Mason over on HTLit begins a post with “At the heart of writing is the desire to leave something behind.”
It is true that the goal of most writing is to crystallize thought, to leave a record behind that persists once memory fails us or we die. But I think I also write sometimes to rid myself of thoughts that dog me, of places I want to leave behind. Forgetting can be just as powerful as remembering. — A strange thought in this age, where so much is recorded.
(Incidentally, the blog post is about a Microsoft research project related to lifelogging. My reaction is: why let a computer tell your life’s narrative for you? A Douglas Coupland quotation from Microserfs: “We generate stories for you because you don’t save the ones that are yours.” But that sort of thinking is why I am so opposed to things like Storytron.)
At the heart of writing is the desire to leave something behind
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