I ran into Neal Patrick Harris recently. We were in something called The Purple People Eater. He was maybe 10, but he still remembered it as the worst experience of his life!
But how many moments are already past! Ah! who thinks of those that are past?
I think there's a tide that tends to carry historians back to the past.
Memory really matters...only if it binds together the imprint of the past and the project of the future, if it enables us to act without forgetting what we wanted to do, to become without ceasing to be, and to be without ceasing to become.
When I write about a 15-year old, I jump, I return to the days when I was that age. It's like a time machine. I can remember everything. I can feel the wind. I can smell the air. Very actually. Very vividly.
'S21' was a film about corporeal memory and how the same gestures repeated many times years earlier can be reawakened.
My first recollection is that of a bugle call.
As an adult, it's hard for me to remember my mother before her sickness. But if I go back into childhood, I can access that.
Of course I think of the past and of Paris, what else is there to remember?
