Mechanical Memory

“The machines remember, so we don’t have to”

—Mark Fisher, i filmed it so i didn’t have to remember it

Denoting the documentation of nostalgia in digital device, so as to avoid personally committing the moment to full memory, hazy and unreliable as such can be, albeit. Documenting to dissociate but carry the receipts. Freeze frame on failure and memorializing mistakes; regret made into a fetish, point of perverted personal pride. 

Why?

All too common is it claimed by one that they wish they could just forget about all the terrible, banal bullshit which makes life so unpleasant. But without that where would growth be? Fire torches down the meadow to regrow into a dense forest just as the nearby volcano blows its top and unleashes its beam of heat destroy the area recently reborn. Remains for nature to reclaim, in our human context/ perceived prescription. 

Trauma and related psychology suggests the memory has an incredible depth and what can [re]surface with enough digging can be astounding in accuracy— or disgraceful distortions; like why the diagnosis of Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD) required rebranding after manipulative malpractice occurred in said area, becoming the now odd diagnosis of dissociative identity disorder (or DID). Nonetheless memory and the neuroplastic recall of the brain can be and is incredible; what isn’t truly remembered is seemingly scarce. Even Alzheimer’s and dementia patients have instances wherein they recall everything in due detail, lucid and momentary as it may be. Surely, under the proper conditions even the pain a woman may in childbirth experience but subsequently forgets from its intensity, could be recounted. 

Intensely documented is such an occasion, typically. Pictures and videos galore. All that would be left is a matter of manipulating the senses so as to induce the memory in detail— somewhat similar to the way EMDR therapy operates— by recreating the settings; so to say. It’s known certain sound frequencies of the sub-bass variety with the propensity to elucidate a sense of unease, unknown fear upon the beings of listening ears. Scent can quickly bring one to reminisce; paired with sight and sound the physical interpretation of information can be uniquely manipulated. 

Forgetting as a fetish however, is somewhat of a faith based in/on unresolved fear. The grass is always greener, is a platitude— true— however it is also a realistic rumination; but, the only thing way out is from the frying pan and through the fire… with a wet towel around the top of the head. What way through, differs but in every so slight degrees; regardless of lived extreme— life is but a banal dream. 

Mind flowing as age goes on and more is embedded: memorized and mended. It’s hard to fully forget before one is dead. 

None of this however answers the question, why document, if not to remember? Is it as simply complicated as being so addicted to the blue light of the phone screen, that it’s the chosen consensus reality? Obviously, there’s much oversight and overestimating the qualities, capacity and personal understanding of human memory; it’s flimsy and we are not elephants. While photographic memory seems so in select cases, it is still speculative in said examples. 

Which brings back around to the actual impulse to document, if it can be called an impulse. Arguably it is, as much as stepping out to smoke a cigarette is to some. In given connotation, the concept of documenting so as to let the machines remember for us, has an almost Gnostic lacing with such a negation of worldly sufferings. Stemming as aforementioned, from such fears and ills; and a lust for them not to cause so much inner shame. If such is the case, why then tape it in 4k?

Disconnected recollection, why documented evidence of deeds. In hindsight wished unseen, undone. Regret doesn’t make much sense without corrected course of action or continued drudging through the mud. Machines don’t seem to remember so we don’t in such instances even; they’re storage bins for aided reference in regards to  memory. Overactive imagination paired with erratic reminiscence. 

An unanswerable question overall, but it’s not one asked in the first place.