Category Archives: Memory

Melodious

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(First off: I’m going to be making some big claims here. I don’t have documentation. These are just the ramblings of a bedridden 60-year-old man. Perhaps if I had grad students to send out in search of footnotes things would be different. But I don’t. Everyone clear? OK. Play ball!)

I’ve been thinking a lot lately of the relationship between music, language, and memory.

These things are all intertwined. Consider Socrates’ objections to books.

“The story goes that Thamus said much to Theuth, both for and against each art, which it would take too long to repeat. But when they came to writing, Theuth said: “O King, here is something that, once learned, will make the Egyptians wiser and will improve their memory; I have discovered a potion for memory and for wisdom.” Thamus, however, replied: “O most expert Theuth, one man can give birth to the elements of an art, but only another can judge how they can benefit or harm those who will use them. And now, since you are the father of writing, your affection for it has made you describe its effects as the opposite of what they really are. In fact, it will introduce forgetfulness into the soul of those who learn it: they will not practice using their memory because they will put their trust in writing, which is external and depends on signs that belong to others, instead of trying to remember from the inside, completely on their own. You have not discovered a potion for remembering, but for reminding; you provide your students with the appearance of wisdom, not with its reality. Your invention will enable them to hear many things without being properly taught, and they will imagine that they have come to know much while for the most part they will know nothing. And they will be difficult to get along with, since they will merely appear to be wise instead of really being so.” (Phaedrus, Pp. 551-552 in Compete Works, edited by J. M. Cooper. Indianapolis IN: Hackett.)

Socrates (or Plato) is on to something here. To use contemporary phrasing, writing is a way to outsource memory. And this applies to all media. Illich talked about how he was of the generation that moved from in-person, unamplified speaking and musical performance, to not only amplification, but recording. Someone could have the voice of Churchill, or Caruso, in their library, in addition to their books.

Our time has taken this yet further. I am in my bed after a stroke. My room, while comfortable enough, has very few things of mine. But through my iPad tablet, I have access to my Kindle library (and others), my Spotify music (and others), my Paramount+ videos (and others).

Which is how this all started. Paramount+ has (or had) a series on the making of the movie The Godfather I enjoy a great deal, The Offer. Being recent, and their own production, I assumed it would be available for years. I outsourced my memory Paramount.

Then, one day, Paramount took it away. I don’t know when. I just know I went to Paramount+ and The Offer wasn’t there anymore. In the implicit contract between Paramount and myself to be my memory, Paramount proved to be an unreliable partner. So I have canceled my subscription.

I now have my own copy of The Offer, technically pirated. Which goes to show how piracy is an archival project. But it reminded me of why I buy so many of my books, at great cost, and don’t use the library as often as I might. When I was a boy in California I used libraries a great deal. Then along came Howard Jarvis and Proposition 13. Libraries largely lost their funding. I could no longer trust libraries to have the books I wanted. So I hung out at used bookstores the way others would lurk at pool halls. (To use Joseph Epstein’s image.) My bookshelves began a lifetime of groaning.

But roll back to Socrates, above. Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey were epic poems. How did Homer remember them, at such length? Or the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Vedas, the Icelandic sagas, or any other oral work of great length?

Why, they were sung, of course.

What were Homer’s melodies? I really wish I knew. But here is someone’s version of Gilgamesh.

Here is the Hurrian Hymn #6, the oldest song where we have both the lyrics and what we believe are the original notes:

Pound talks about how great poetry should not stray too far from the dance. But this, too, implies melody.

Music. Memory. How many of us have songs we remember and recognize as soon as the first chord plays? What else is Name That Tune but a memory game? How many songs do we remember from the crib?

This came up through an internet meme (of all things):

The point, that women need to know (or at least, greatly want to know) when the blood will come is a strong reason for inventing a calendar. So is the snow. Or the baby. Or the migratory birds, or animals.

Does it make sense such a calendar would be sung?

How did h. sap. come up with music in the first place? What music touches us most deeply?

A woman needing to calm a baby, and so a lullaby.

A man seeing his partner die in childbirth, and so a dirge.

A group wanting to express joy, and so the dance.

Music evokes memory. Language evokes memory. Writing evokes memory. Recording evokes memory.

It’s a long march from the general (birth/death) to the specific (your favorite singer, doing your favorite song, during your favorite performance).

I currently believe language evolved to fill in that specificity. To increase the bandwidth. How do you keep that baby alive? Where do we go to follow the beasts and sun? Which mushrooms do we avoid?

Maybe this is all rehashed Jean Auel. I’ve never read her, so cannot say.

But I still think it’s all been to remember more and more, in greater detail, across generations.

The past isn’t what it used to be

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Here at Mission, one of my fellow residents is quite old — 99.

I thought about that a little bit. So he was born in 1922. That’s not right. Surely a 99-year-old was born in the 1800s. Horse-drawn carriages, not Duesenbergs and gin.

I think that way because for so much of life, it was true. But time advances, and now 99 years reaches back only to the Jazz Age, instead of the McKinley administration.

Jason Kottke has something he calls “The Great Span”: “(T)he link across large periods of history by individual humans.” The last surviving child of a Civil War veteran (and thus drawing an Army pension) died in 2020. Units of 99 years (sometimes called “Bettys,” after Betty White) definitely qualify, but it’s stunning how quickly that event horizon moves on.

At least to this 60-year-old.

The Kosher Burrito

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Ah, memories. This was a small place across the street from LA City Hall (I worked at City Hall East for five summers).

This LA Times article from 2001 describes it this way:

(O)n a typical day, the stand sells about 100 namesake Kosher burritos–which include pastrami, chili sauce, dill-pickle chips and chopped onion wrapped in a flour tortilla–in addition to burgers, fries and fried chicken.

As I always relate at this point, one time I went there and was asked, “Do you want cheese on that?” Which, of course, would make it trayf (not kosher).

I declined. I wanted the original experience.

Still, for its aspirations of serving hot food to City Hall grazers for lunch, it was a great place.

They never forget

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From the movie Strange Days. Mace (Angela Bassett) tells Lenny (Ralph Fiennes) about how memories are designed to fade. Meanwhile, though, elephants are watching from Lenny’s wall.

I got to ask director Kathryn Bigelow about whether the symbolism meant anything, and/or was intentional, at a screening. (The same screening where I noticed this shot.) “No… I’m going to have to ask my art director about this someday.”

I’m amused by the idea of the art director (John Warnke) rebelling against the script in the most subtle way possible.

See it, know it

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Potter Stewart was the US Supreme Court justice who said, in the case Jacobellis v. Ohio (1964), “I shall not today attempt further to define (pornography)… But I know it when I see it…”

I was reading In Praise of Slowness by Carl Honoré, and he quotes Augustine: “What then is time? If no one asks me, I know: if I wish to explain it to one that asketh, I know not…” (Book XI, ~400AD)

So Mr. Stewart had a bit of prior art on that idea.

“Talks up a storm with those wooden teeth…”

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Or so Stan Freberg says of George Washington when he Presents the United States, Vol. 1.

One problem, though. Washington’s teeth weren’t made of wood.

I don’t know if it was this review of WASHINGTON: A Life by Ron Chernow in the New York Times. Still, I recently heard, in connection with Chernow’s book, something similar to Times reviewer Janet Maslin’s off-hand comment: “[Washington had a] harshly pragmatic attitude toward slavery (he purchased slaves’ teeth, perhaps for use in dentures).”

Yeah… that caused a big gulp on my part. Perhaps I have too much empathy but… George Washington? Of all people? Using the teeth of his slaves for his dentures? Can you be more literal yet symbolic when it comes to an image of white privilege and rapaciousness?

I hunted down what I think may be the source for this. It used to be reprinted online by the PBS series Frontline. I believe it was an article by Mary V. Thompson, who was described as, “A research specialist at Mt. Vernon, [who] studies the domestic life, foodways, and religious practices of the residents of George Washington’s plantation, with a special interest in the slave community.” The article originally appeared in Virginia Cavalcade, Volume 48, Autumn 1999, No. 4, pp.178-190.

Here’s the core of it:

“Slaves of the eighteenth century sometimes turned to the perfectly acceptable means of making money by selling their teeth to dentists. Since at least the end of the Middle Ages, poor people had often sold their teeth for use in both dentures and in tooth-transplant operations for those wealthy enough to afford the procedures. Sometimes the teeth were perfectly healthy; others were diseased and needed to be pulled anyway. In 1780 a French dentist named Jean Pierre Le Moyer (also called Le Mayeaur, Le Mayeur, and Joseph Lemaire) came to America, possibly as a naval surgeon with the French forces commanded by the Comte de Rochambeau, and over the next decade treated patients in New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Alexandria, and Richmond. He seems to have had an extensive practice in tooth transplants, but the results of the procedure were short-lived, usually less than one or two years. Transplantable teeth were hard to come by, and in 1783 Le Moyer even went so far as to advertise in the New York papers for “persons disposed to sell their front teeth, or any of them,” netting the donor two guineas (forty-two shillings) per tooth. In Richmond, he offered anyone but slaves a similar amount for their front teeth. Technical problems made it impossible to transplant molars, so the operation was probably useful primarily for cosmetic reasons. Le Moyer first treated George Washington’s teeth at his military headquarters in 1783.

The following year, in May of 1784, Washington paid several unnamed “Negroes,” presumably Mount Vernon slaves, 122 shillings for nine teeth, slightly less than one-third the going rate advertised in the papers, “on acct. of the French Dentis [sic} Doctr. Lemay [sic],” almost certainly Le Moyer. Over the next four years, the dentist was a frequent and apparently favorite guest on the plantation. Whether the Mount Vernon slaves sold their teeth to the dentist for any patient who needed them or specifically for George Washington is unknown, although Washington’s payment suggests that they were for his own use. Washington probably underwent the transplant procedure–”I confess I have been staggered in my belief in the efficacy of transplantion,” he told Richard Varick, his friend and wartime clerk, in 1784–and thus it may well be that some of the human teeth implanted to improve his appearance, or used to manufacture his dentures, came from his own slaves.”

Wow. Just… wow.

*^*^*

EDITED TO ADD: Mount Vernon has an exhibit that includes the only known surviving denture of Washington’s.  “Carved from hippopotamus ivory, the denture contains real human teeth fixed in the ivory by means of brass screws.” They don’t note the provenance of the “real human teeth” in question.

ETA2: It wasn’t the Times. It was this piece in the New Yorker, by Jill Lepore. Lepore herself is a history professor at Harvard, which, combined with the New Yorker‘s fact checkers, makes this all too credible.

Lepore’s off-hand comment was striking:

“The mar to [Washington’s] beauty was his terrible teeth, which were replaced by unsuccessful transplant surgery and by dentures made from ivory and from teeth pulled from the mouths of his slaves.”

It was “pulled” that made my heart drop. Thompson’s account makes it seem much more voluntary — or as voluntary as a commercial transaction with a person who owns you as chattel can be.

Well, there you have it:

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According to Mr. Bush’s speech last night, Iraq is anywhere from one to five years before being capable of launching a strike against us. Which is why it’s so desperately urgent we hit them… um, tomorrow. {cough}

But the most disturbing thing about this whole scenario is how it plays out if you look at it logically.

There’re two axes here: Either Iraq has weapons of mass destruction (WMD), or it doesn’t. And Iraq will either use them, or they won’t.

That means there’re four outcomes, one of which is impossible:

Iraq doesn’t have WMD, and won’t use them. For me, this is the most likely outcome. You can see it all over the place in our own planning, with the devil-may-care attitude we’re showing both about how long this war will last (over quickly enough for Tony Blair to stay PM a day or two, we hope), and the possibilities about retaliation. Then again, that means we’re about to send 300,000 combined troops over to a country looking for weapons that don’t exist. According to some polling data released during today’s Talk of the Nation call-in show, 80% of Americans think Iraq has WMD, and that disarming Iraq is a major criterion for “victory”.  (Dear 80% of the US: Iraq is likely already unarmed, and you’re likely to get a massive disappointment.) Either that, or I would look really carfeully at the serial numbers of whatever WMD we “find” — especially after the fiasco of the forgery of the documents purporting to show Iraq tried to buy uranium from Niger. Also, this is the scenario most likely to generate the previously predicted 1-14 vote in the Security Council calling for sanctions against the US (and maybe the UK, if they’re still in the game).

Iraq has WMD, and uses them. But if that’s true… then we’re sending 300,000 soldiers good and true to basically be burnt to a crisp so the Administration can then justify massive retaliation. And the Administration is doing this knowingly, with malice aforethought. Oddly, this doesn’t comfort me. (Marshmallows at the Reichstag, anyone?)

Iraq has WMD, but won’t use them. This appears to be the Officially Approved Plan. I hope Mr. Hussein has been properly briefed, and he sticks to the script. But it’s the only way to explain the combination of no obvious contingencies for the use of WMD against our trops, intertwined with no apparent hesitation about the fact that months of concentrated effort through inspection, espionage, satellite flybys, and surreptitious signals listening has turned up… radio chatter with nothing else to back it up. {ooh! aah!} Ruel Marc Gerecht appears to have gotten it right in The Atlantic back in July 2001 — our intelligence agencies appear to have about zero assets in the Near East region. Almost every breakthrough we’ve had appears to have been done by either the Israelis or the Pakistanis, with Our Boys brought in at the last minute for the photo op.

Iraq doesn’t have WMD, but will somehow use them. This is the outcome that’s logically impossible. Unless Mr. Hussein just rang up a massive credit card bill tonight. Or unless he just cut a deal with the North Koreans — who almost certainly do have WMD at this point, which is why the Cowardly Lion treats them with such shyness — to bomb us on his behalf.

(NOTE: I did indeed write this in March, 2003. It was in my Livejournal, since converted to Dreamwidth. I’m just bringing it over here because… well, look at the domain name, pal. It belongs here.)