Memories Are Collages of Impressionistic Flashbacks

Human memory depends on pictures, thoughts, spoken and written words, and attention. Some memories are fanciful, some are emotional, and some come from unanticipated striking events that change our lives in short or long ways. We have good times and bad. I’ve been thinking about this phenomenon, pondering my life.

Belief can alter memory and, conversely, memory can drive belief. Belief itself is strong enough to change memory and powerful enough to influence future successes. Leonard Shelby, the protagonist in the film "Memento" shares his thoughts: “Look, memory can change the shape of a room. It can change the color of a car. And memories can be distorted. They are just an interpretation, not a record; and they are irrelevant if you have the facts.”

Many years ago, I wrote a short story about a man who performed an extraordinary stunt on a street corner near where I once lived. I was 11 or 12 years old doing somersaults and tricks on roller skates with friends when a passerby offered to show us that he could stand on one finger. He did so, right on the pavement. But now, I am not sure that I ever encountered the man. Could my memory have played a trick? Could anyone possibly stand on a single finger? Perhaps I was remembering a dream? My memory seemed to have concocted a quasi-mythical figure.

Several years after writing my story, I attended a special circus performance, the hundredth anniversary of the Ringling Brothers Circus. It was 1970 and I was seated high in the stands of the Boston Garden (now the Fleet Center), where, once again, I saw the same man who turned out to be Mr. Unus (aka Franz Furtner) fabled to be the only man in the world who could stand on one finger with no support and no wires. More than that, he was standing on one finger and balancing himself on the end of a pole. Astonishing!

Not a fantasy!

Although I still found it difficult to believe that my meeting with Mr. Unus happened, I became more convinced that he was. Still, there was a shadow of a doubt caused by the presumed physical impossibility of the stunt. When I was younger, I could have believed that a man could balance himself on one finger. Yet once a better knowledge of physics replaced my naïve understanding, I had difficulty believing in things like magic, spirits, and humans standing on fingers. Wires had to be attached to his legs. But no! It would have been impossible for him to spin hoops on his legs and left arm. Or is it possible that a wire was attached to his waist? I don't believe so, for I was seated close enough to have seen wires.

The central question of memories is how they emerge and how they last. They are the stubborn, enduring, and challenging questions surrounding deep investigations of consciousness argued for centuries. Memories come to us in a collage of flashbacks. In time, each figure in the collage tells its story that evolves to make sense of the composite, one figure to another, to form a sequential pattern for signaling and storing a distinctive memory. Memory is a pathway structure, not necessarily a coded image of something once thought, heard, or observed. To recall an event that happened but not as they actually did. In that sense, the memory is invariably incorrect.

The English philosopher David Hume put it succinctly: “Belief is something felt by the mind, which distinguishes the ideas of the judgment from the fictions of the imagination.” Felt? What is the sensation of belief? We don’t taste, smell, see, or hear it. We don’t feel it like we feel warmth, chill, or a toothache. And yet... And yet we can feel anger, sadness, or happiness. We can feel emotions such as love, hate, and anger. We can even feel impressions of approval or insult. But can we trust the authenticity of a memory?

As a nonfiction writer, I bring my readers to places of curiosity and tell them information to ponder, not accepting without thought. Flavor and shade come into my anecdotal digressions in drama vignettes from my memories to keep my readers in the grip of identification and involvement. Facts and truths of memories are almost always fictitious because memories are just collages of impressionistic flashbacks.

One day I saw two suns, each as bright as the other. On another occasion, I saw a triple rainbow... I did, I did, I did! I am sure my readers have stories they tell believing they happened as told. I might be an exaggeration but I am not a liar, at least I don't think I lie. So what makes us convinced that our memories are accurate? Time has a way of fabricating and later solidifying memories for us to believe them. Could the truths of our stories come from illusory perception?