While taking a shower earlier, I suddenly thought of that sad song whose lyrics include the phrases "...felt that old familiar pain" and "...the snow turned into rain". I was pretty sure it was by Dan Fogelberg, but decided to look it up later (I did, and it was). Then by the 80's association I started to muse about the song with the words "Maybe we're near the end" (turned out to be a case of the old mondegreens -- it's "Baby we're near the end"), but I couldn't think of the singer's name. I knew he was big in the 70's and 80's, and I could see him in my mind's eye, performing the song on video, but his name escaped me. Then, after a few wet and sudsy moments it partially came to me: Kenny ____. I still couldn't recall his last name -- but I felt that it had something to do with trees. Kenny Wood? Kenny Trunk? Kenny Branch? Then came Kenny Log... and of course, Kenny Loggins! Hah!
I've read somewhere that as a person grows older and mental faculties begin to deteriorate, one of the first things to go is a memory for nouns, including names. Well, I've always been Very forgetful of names and faces anyway, so no worries there (another Hah! but with more self-deprecatory irony^) -- there have actually been embarrassing occasions in the past when someone greeted me in the street and I couldn't remember who they were.
Still, sometimes I worry just a tiny bit that, at some far-off point in the future, the day may come when I won't be able to tell the difference between this:
and this:
EDIT: Why was I able to remember that Loggins' name had something to do with trees (not even logging specifically, remember -- it wasn't a case of "it sounded like..."), but not the name itself? Or more generally, why is it that we remember mnemonic devices for specific things, but not the things themselves? I've always had trouble recalling the word "mulberry", but ever since I linked it with the Dr. Seuss classic "And to Think That I Saw it on Mulberry Street", it became easier to remember. Why would that be? Why remember to remember the story, but not the word in the title of the story? Also with the word "infantry"; it became easier to remember it once I started to link it to "babies". And I would not be able to remember all the groupings of taxonomy without "Drunk Kings Play Cards On Fat Girls' Stomachs" (Domain, Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species). O.K., so that last one is a sentence that makes sense, so it's easy to remember (that seems to be the prevailing opinion on the matter, which makes sense), but what about vague feelings like "I think it had something to do with ___"? Sylvan Muldoon mentioned in his classic of spiritualist literature The Projection of the Astral Body that every time he passed a certain spot near his house he would be reminded of a circus. He didn't know why, it just happened to him. There must have been some sensory link that connected that spot to the memory of a circus that he'd seen in the past; and surely the vague feeling of "it had something to do with..." must have something similar at work, even if we cannot specifically identify it.
No comments:
Post a Comment