On Memory I

"And suddenly it's evening"

I spent a year of my life studying writing on stone. The quite amazing ancient feat of a stonemason sculpting with chisel and hammer hundreds of letter forms into rock. I am still processing, today, the wonder of being able to stand in a museum in Athens and touch the work of a stonemason from the 5th Century BC. Yes, I touched. ‘Do not touch’ signs are there to be ignored.

Why did someone think this record was worthy of memorial? What connection do I have with the human experience of the people recorded? Hundreds of citizens of Argos who had died fighting for the Athenian cause at the Battle of Tanagra in 457 BC.

I think we all have a desire to be remembered. Whether it be a blue plaque on your house - “Charles Graham, gentleman of letters and commerce, lived here…”, or whether it be your gravestone - “loving son, husband, and father…”.

This is often writing on stone, like the Ancient Greek grave monuments that I studied. It places us in a tradition, in a physical connection, with worlds beyond our own. I think this fundamental human desire helps us feel that there is something more, helps us handle our lack of consequentiality in the universe.

I have been travelling to the same monument since I can remember. It is now bent over, crippled by the sinking earth, and time.

We change the flowers. The rusty black pot is still here. I wonder whether it was meant to be temporary. Now it feels like part of the furniture. It is integral to the monument.

We look. We take a picture of us here. Not sure why.

I have a memory of this place, I’m with someone who has a memory of the dedicatee.

I don’t. Yet 50% of me is him.

Weird.

Do I mourn? Is my memory of him now hers? Is it a memory of him, or is it a memory of this experience, a few stories retold like folklore, and some faded photographs.

Proust and his ‘petite madeleines’ have always rung true for me. Each time we conjure a memory we recast it through the lens of our current experience, so that each time we recall it, it becomes more and more translucent.

Further and further from the original, but in that process it becomes a memory not just of the original experience, but of all the time in between.

I now think of this writing on stone everyday.

I’ve transposed the chisel cuts to an etching on my arm. I say it’s to remind me of how short life can be. Or is it simply a way of keeping me connected to that memory, which I can now reconjure daily.

Slipping further and further from that churchyard in Somerset each time.

I was standing with her and the dogs.

Then just one dog.

Now it feels like I’m alone.

It’s my memory of him, of someone I never knew. Created by me, for me. A way to understand myself.

“And suddenly, it’s evening”.