Disoriented Shades of Memory

"There are three sides to every story: your side, my side, and the truth. And no one is lying."

-- Robert Evans. 

***

One of today's headlines involves the controversy over what causes Alzheimer's, the mysterious ailment that steals away our memory and leaves us disoriented. Let's hope the new drug recently approved by the FDA helps.

"Memory and Disorientation" might be an accurate title for a memoir, should I remember to write one.

Meanwhile, the past week served up a virtual memory orgy from my time at HotWired and Wired Digital, names for the same place. (It yielded about six business cards, too.) Although it was a brief period in my career, barely two years, it was when I made the jump from the old media world to the new one.

You don't easily forget a moment like that.

What seems to happen to me, and maybe to you, is that different periods of the past suddenly become vivid again, where every detail suddenly stands up like the hairs on your arm in a bright light, begging for attention.

Yet if you indulge those memories, you risk stirring up emotions that have long been buried -- that's why this business of memoir-writing can be hazardous at times.

When I taught "memoir as journalism" at Stanford and U-C Extension (for seniors), often the students would unintentionally reopen family wounds that had never really healed about sexual abuse, betrayals, addiction, and loss. But other students discovered family histories they'd never suspected, such as Chinese families that had changed their name when landing at Angel Island, pretending to be relatives of somebody already here -- the only way they could get into the U.S. at that time.

Or Jewish families pretending to be Protestants to avoid anti-semitic, anti-Catholic immigration laws in the U.S. as they fled the horrors of Nazism.

In the end, the consistent feedback I got from those who took the courses was that investigating their family's past was worth it. 

In the early days of the Internet media, we liked to say "content wants to be free." Maybe the past, whatever is buried there, wants to be free, too -- freed from the chains of memory, corrupted. 

I always worry when we published these types of revisions that we would get something wrong -- and that someone else would remember it all much differently.

But maybe that is the point. As Robert Evans says in the quote at the top of this post, even though we may have very different memories of the same event, nobody is lying.

Except of course those who are. And lying has a lot to do with power.

Unearthing lies that rebalance power dynamics adjusts the truth -- or something approximating it -- and that can be disorienting.

***

"The Truth Will Set You Free, But First It Will Piss You Off..."

-- Gloria Steinem

***

THE HEADLINES: 

* Controversial approval of Alzheimer’s drug reignites the battle over cause of the disease (WP)

* In ramp-up to 2022 midterms, Republican candidates center pitches on Trump’s false election claims (WP)

* Climate Change Is Making It Harder for Campers to Beat the Heat -- Burn bans, flashlight campfires, extreme heat and stronger rainstorms: Today’s campers are experiencing their summer fun against the backdrop of climate change. (NYT)

* Tropical Storm Elsa headed to landfall on central Cuba coast (AP)

* With trillions at stake, Democrats must face tough choices on Biden’s agenda within weeks (WP)

* New infrastructure deal must focus on climate, activists say (AP)

* Why America’s Politics Are Stubbornly Fixed, Despite Momentous Changes -- The country is recovering from a pandemic and an economic crisis, and its former president is in legal and financial peril. But no political realignment appears to be at hand. (NYT)

* Yes, Trump Really Did Lose Michigan (Editorial Board/WSJ)

*  As the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks approaches, victims' relatives are pressing the courts to answer what they see as lingering questions about the Saudi government's role in the attacks. (AP)

* The scientists fighting to save the ocean’s most important carbon capture system (WP)

* Almonds Swept California Farms. Then the Water Ran Out. (WSJ)

* Canada Battles More Than 180 Wildfires With Hundreds Dead In Heat Wave (NPR)

* Crews resume search for survivors amid condo rubble after collapse and demolition (WP)

* Afghan security personnel flee into Tajikistan as Taliban advance (Reuters)

* Iran, facing another virus surge, reimposes restrictions and focuses on homegrown vaccines (WP)

* As COVID Vaccinations Slow, Parts Of The U.S. Remain Far Behind 70% Goal (NPR)

* The Newspaperman Who Documented Black Tulsa (New Yorker)

* Baseball’s war on sticky stuff is already changing the game (WP)

* If Job Search Fails, Woman Knows She Can Always Find Work As Sole Protector Of Someone Else’s Children (The Onion)

***

"Come Away With Me"

Song by Norah Jones

Come away with me in the night
Come away with me
And I will write you a song

Come away with me on a bus
Come away where they can't tempt us, with their lies

And I want to walk with you
On a cloudy day
In fields where the yellow grass grows knee-high
So won't you try to come

Come away with me and we'll kiss
On a mountaintop
Come away with me
And I'll never stop loving you

And I want to wake up with the rain
Falling on a tin roof
While I'm safe there in your arms
So all I ask is for you
To come away with me in the night
Come away with me

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