The Sweet Revisions of Memory, Lies, Shadings, and the Muse

Last January, at a MFA Residency in Seaside, Oregon, Jack Driscoll gave a craft talk on memory. He began his presentation with a quote from the poet William Stafford: "Put something down everyday in my hand from writing ... to bring the ship a little nearer to its longing."

With this quote in mind, Jack wanted us to be aware of a physical essential in our writing: our gut. This idea relates to our recent memory, and how each day we see thousands of images. Our mind categorizes these stimuli, and chooses the images we remember and discards the rest. But Jack suggested that we push our daily memories a bit further. If we listen to our gut, we will tune into images and prioritize them. This is an opportunity to search daily images or events for crucial details that make them unique. Once we begin to observe the details of the event, our memory of it evolves into a larger picture. The larger picture contains the details that stimulate us either by an emotional content or an intellectual one. If we keep a daily journal of these images and events, the journal becomes a good source for a poem or a story.

With our older memories, let us turn to humor. Humor is the relaxant that gives us the ability to face things that are beautifully sad. In Theodore Roethke's "My Papa's Waltz," the narrative uses humor to freeze a sad moment in time that becomes palatable and beautiful through humor. The poem is the memory of an actual event as well as the speaker's perception of it. And in this way, the event is transformed. The immediate images of the boy waltzing on the feet of his father are enhanced by the music of the rhyme.

It's essential for a narrative to evolve from actual facts. In this evolution, we use our imagination to build the narrative that ultimately reaches an epiphany or what we like to call a change of mind or change in thinking. Thus, our memories are transformed into imagined transgressions.

(J Storie)