Dissecting memories as the basis of personality

Lent 2019 - Day 25

The halfway stage of Lent has been passed; resolve - strong, will - iron. No meat, no alcohol, no salt snacks, fast food - confectionary, biscuits, cakes I avoid anyway. More vegan elements to my diet, lentils, tofu, chickpeas interspersed with the fish and cheese. And lots of exercise, twice a day, full set of press-ups (60 a doddle, 70 at a stretch), pull-ups (10-11 in one go). 11,000+ paces a day, every day.

A healthy body is home to a healthy mind, and peace of mind comes from a healthy soul. The deeper aspects of Lent are as important. Today, I want to look at the role that memories play in the shaping of our personality, and how our conscious - and indeed - subconscious observations - make up an important part of who we are.

In particular, I want to write about involuntary memory, sometimes known as Proustian memory, after novelist  Marcel Proust. He posited in his novel In Search of Lost Time that involuntary memory contained the 'essence of the past', stating that voluntary memory lacked accuracy and authenticity. In the novel, he describes eating a tea-soaked madeleine biscuit, an action which powerfully brought back to him a childhood memory. From that memory, he rebuilt in his mind his childhood home. This becomes a recurring theme throughout In Search of Lost Time, with sensations reminding Proust of previous experiences. He dubbed these  sensations 'involuntary memories'.

I have frequently written about flashbacks, ('PAFF!' moments) unbidden or triggered by sensory stimuli. Smell, as Proust points out, is a great evocator of deeply buried memories.

A child of what author Geoff Dyer calls the Airfix generation, I was a virtual one-boy production line assembling an endless succession of plastic kits; warplanes, warships, armoured vehicles and cars. Since the age of five, I must have made hundreds of them. Assembling these models, glued together with polystyrene cement and decorated with enamel paints was an aromatic experience, not appreciated at the time. To this day, I have flashbacks linked to the smells of individual paints, and the kit I was using it on - Airfix Matt Brick Red (Bristol Beaufighter), for example, or Humbrol Matt Sea Grey (A-7 Corsair II) or Gloss Brunswick Green (HMS Victorious). And the exact shades of the colours too - from Olive Drab to Dark Earth, from Duck Egg Blue to Insignia Yellow. How my eyes reacted to them, I can recreate those memories without any external stimulus. It's there in my memory, and still strong.

But smells are fiendishly complex - the smell of a house, for example, or a cupboard or garage... very unique. The smell of mothball on a winter coat taken out of the wardrobe for the first time that season - and PAFF! There it is. I am transported from a Warsaw bus in October to an ex-military barracks in Gloucestershire in the summer of 1967.

These triggered memory flashbacks are wholly spontaneous; trying to recreate them with deliberation is difficult. I am trying, for example, to summon up the smell of my late parents-in-laws' house - now sold, refurbished by new owners - that atmosphere - those qualia - lost. I cannot just bring it back. No doubt at some time in the future, it will return, be it unbidden or triggered...

I am who I am because of an accretion of memories built up over my lifetime; sounds (a front-garden gate latch clicking shut, a Morris Minor changing gear from third to second, pop hits of the 1960s and 1970s), sights (a Belisha beacon by the kerb, a Routemaster bus, an old copy of Look and Learn) - the itchy feel of a British battledress top, as I wore in Polish scouts, the acrylic plate attached to my dental braces pressed against my palate, the sweaty feel of a bicycle helmet on my head in summer, the taste of Lyons Maid Strawberry Mivvi,  Olde English Spangles, grilled sardines with cuentros on a Portuguese beach - and then all those smells... Communist Poland in summer, klatki schodowe, the back of a kiosk Ruchu - cheap newsprint, cheap tobacco, cheap plastic toys, the smell of two-stroke exhaust...

Another smell memory that has stayed with me (for 56 years!) was the smell of my First Day in School - September 1962, Oaklands Road Primary, Infants. The smell of Magic Marker ink on handwritten signs naming things in the school building: 'Door', 'Nature table', 'Class 3', mingled with the smell of fresh wooden-floor varnish. I say first day in school, but each start of term at the infants' department of my primary school had those exact same smells. [They were subtly different in the junior school building from September 1964 on.] And from that era, the autumn of 1962 - around my fifth birthday - a piece of pop music ingrained in my deepest memory. The sound of the (then) future.



But my strange, unexplained, anomalous qualia memories of other, earlier lives, are not memories of sensory sensations - they relate to spirit of place in another time, clear yet ephemeral; fleeting - I try to parse them, to dissect them - trying to relive them by returning is impossible. Time has moved on; the spirit of place evolves over time; the billboards, the street furniture, the clothes, the cars. But it's real; I savour and cherish these briefest flashes, insights into an atavistic past.

I shall return to memory with a review of Adventures in Memory, by Hilde and Ylva Østby, two Norwegian sisters - one a novelist, the other a neuropsychologist. And yes, Proust's madeleine biscuits get a mention.

This time last year:
Winter returned for a morning

This time two years ago:
Globalisation and the politics of identity

This time five years ago:
More photos from Edinburgh

This time six years ago:
Edinburgh continues to fascinate

This time seven years ago:
Ealing in bloom - early spring

This time 11 years ago:
Swans arrive in Jeziorki