(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.
