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Wednesday, February 04, 2009
DON'T FORGET ME
Harry Nilsson
Pussy Cats
Buddha : 1974
[Buy It]
FORGET ALL ABOUT IT
The Nazz
Nazz Nazz
SGC : 1969
[Buy It]
DON'T FORGET WHAT I TOLD YOU
John Simon
John Simon's Album
Water : 1971
[Buy It]
The other day I was cleaning out an early-model desktop computer and I found a folder labeled "Old Old Old." Inside it were pictures of old, old, old people. No, no. That's not true. That would be impolite and uncomfortable. Inside it were a number of text files, all date-stamped April 2000. That wasn't the composition date, as it turned out, but the date of transfer from some other storage device (a floppy disk?) to the internal hard drive of the computer. The files seemed to be from the early nineties. Most were short notes. In many cases, I could retrieve the original context. This one was a note to my roommate regarding a feud about a lamp ("I'm sorry that it broke but I think we both know how that happened"). That one was a note to my brother with what I think was relationship advice ("You might never be sure but if you're sure that you'll never be sure that's something to go on"). One of the files completely perplexed me. It seemed to be a note to a friend in which Terms Of Friendship were being managed and reset.Yes I'd like to keep it up. I know that you say you don't, or that you can't. You say different things at different times. I don't know why I didn't think to say that same thing sooner. Wishful thinking, maybe? Hey, yesterday I was out at the store and I thought of you. It was because the woman in front of me in the check-out line was hideous and annoying. Ha ha. Just kidding. It was because in one aisle there was a sign that said "Party Supplies" and I remembered how you like using that word: supply. "What if this isn't supplying me with the things I need," you said. You were standing by your refrigerator, so I made a joke: "What, you want one that crushes ice?" You laughed, which was nice of you. Friendly. I am curious if you really felt like laughing. Why would you laugh when you're so convinced that I'm making unreasonable demands? Anyway, I'm sure we'll talk about this more tomorrow and the week after that and probably next year and it won't get any clearer. Unpolished mirrors, like you said. The next to last sentence was wishful thinking, as far as I know. There are no notes that seem to be sequels to this one. Moreover, I don't remember what the note was about, or who this friend was, or if I sent it, or if I received a reply, or anything else. Maybe it wasn't even a friend. Maybe it was someone I was dating. I figured that it probably wasn't written to a serious girlfriend, because I tended to live with my serious girlfriends and wouldn't have said "your refrigerator." But this was just detective work and I didn't even remember the victim.
I sent the note to a friend who has known me for a long time. She said she recognized my writing, but that she had no idea who I might have been writing to. The note reminded her of something, though: she had recently had a similar experience. She was clearing out a desk drawer and found a legal pad with scribbled notes that she assumed were fragments of a draft for a longer letter. "I think it was to that guy," she said, naming a name that I was supposed to remember but didn't. "It's funny how faint he is now to me. In the notes, I was telling him about how there had been a shift, how one minute I had felt one way and the next I had felt another way. It's like the past never happened."
"That's what you said to him, or that's what you're saying to me now?"
"What?"
"Was that what you were telling him, that it was like the past never happened because you felt one way one second and another way the next second? Or are you saying that to me now because you remember him so faintly?"
"I'm not sure what you're saying," she said. "All I know is that it's very comforting. I love the idea that we have pasts that are unavailable to us. If I had to remember everything about that guy, how would I ever have gotten over the pain?"
"Get over pain?" I said. "Get past it, maybe. If you really forgot everything about him, then what would have stopped you from dating him again?"
"I'd never forget everything," she said.
"Exactly," I said. "But I did. I forgot everything about this letter, this person, this time. I don't know what the inside jokes are about. I don't remember seeing the Party Supplies aisle in the store. Maybe it was a piece of fiction. And, even if it's real, doesn't that mean that the same friend could resurface and the same problem reappear? I could put my hand, or hers, on the hot stove again."
There was then a long pause in which she either considered what I had said with great concentration or ignored me completely and paid attention instead to someone in her office. "I have to go to a fantastically interesting grant meeting," she said.
"Okay," I said. "Later." She went off to her meeting. I went back to the note about supplies and demands, tried again to remember who I had written it to, failed. Part of the problem was in the reciprocity: I didn't like forgetting, but being forgotten was worse. Change was acceptable, even necessary, but the prospect of disappearance triggered an existential shock, and here was solid proof that things did not always persist. In thinking about the note, I found myself thinking about the phone call. Had she forgotten it already? Were a broader set of memories endangered? How could I be sure that the present would not become the future's forgotten past? I wrote that question down and emailed it to my friend: "How can I be sure that the present will not become the future's forgotten past?" Then I went off to a meeting of my own. It was fantastically interesting too. What a coincidence.
Later, as I rode the subway home, I tried to think of songs about forgetting. Or rather, I tried to remember songs about forgetting. I didn't have a pen or paper with me, so I couldn't write them down, and as a result any that I remembered on the subway would have to be re-remembered when I got home.
Most songs about forgetting are really songs about fear of being forgotten, which in turn are really songs about fear of being unloved or unwanted. I remembered Bill Lloyd's "Forget About Us" ("I cannot forget about us"), James Carr's "Forgetting You" ("Don't make me live the rest of my life forgetting you"), Simple Minds' "Don't You (Forget About Me)" ("Don't you forget about me"). Harry Nilsson's "Don't Forget Me" is a pledge of undying loyalty even in times of dying, with a melody too beautiful for the bleak lyrics:When we're older
And full of cancer
It doesn't matter now,
Come on, get happy,
'Cause nothing lasts forever Well, okay, but if nothing lasts forever, then what about forgetting? Eventually that's going to fade, too, and when it does, what replaces it? Utter indifference? Fantasy? Or was it memory? Would there come a time when I would remember exactly who I was writing that note to, and why, and what it meant, and what I meant it to mean? The Nazz's "Forget All About It" is a noisy Who-lite song that makes this suggestion (the chorus, "Forget all about it a while," is either a paradox or a substantial psychological insight), along with another helpful one:If you haven't got time to rest
Then take the record off now There was one song whose title I almost exactly recalled, and that I looked up when I got home. It was John Simon's "Don't Forget What I Told You," from his 1971 solo album. The song--which Simon sings poorly but sweetly, like a tone-deaf Richard Manuel--somewhat resembles a love song but opens up much wider to accommodate fairly apocalyptic notions of disconnection and discontent:This world's a joke they tell me
It'll go up in smoke some day And then later:How would you feel if your world wasn't real? This was the question I had sent in email to my friend, more or less. It was the question that hung over the note I had found. It was the question that I wanted to remember.
There were other songs, too, I think, but they're fuzzy and getting fuzzier by the minute. Unpolished mirrors, like she said.Labels: ben, rock and roll
posted by Ben
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