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I am writing a book about memory. Nothing seems to be easier, because nothing needs to be invented. It is how you feel when you write it, but you know that feeling is deceiving you. Memory is a slippery land, full of unknown monsters, and paths that your consciousness has not mapped; it contains many traps and temptations.
For example, how deep should the details go? Does everything need to be described? Of course you don’t. You are a writer and you weigh what goes in and what goes out of the book. And sometimes what you leave out of the book is very important. Just as I kept a diary when I was writing my first novel, it was to make sure that the things that bothered me on a daily political level, that I was carrying around, didn’t make it into the novel. Like all mortals in this country. So that diary was full of everything, good passages, bad passages. It was my filter through which I didn’t have things in my novel that would rot quickly. It was about making the book out of more durable material. I guess that’s one of the goals of writing. And there are a lot of them. Writing a memoir is a different form of writing than writing a novel. Even though both forms speak the language of autobiography.
To avoid confusion, a memoir is not a memoir written by an old man on the edge of life in which he wants to give a famous retelling of his and other people’s lives, times/spaces, eras, wars, etc. . A memoir is a form of nonfiction that can be written by a fifteen-year-old girl. One does not have to be old to write about reminiscences. Memories are what make us human. Paul Auster said that most people in their fifties are in a constant dialogue with the dead as much as with the living. The refined and highly sensitive are carrying on this dialogue with the dead even before they are fifty.
Every passing moment acquires a special aura. Last year I lived in Berlin. A few years later it would have become a golden memory if the end of the world that was announced to us periodically had not happened.
One of the problems when writing a memoir is how to know where to stop. Separate the essential from the non-essential, just as you would do in fiction or autobiographical essays. Only the problem here is bigger because you are writing about yourself. Now you need to decide what is important in your life and what will be interesting to your readers. Or should you forget about them when you write. You should forget about them when you write, but, anyway, I kept thinking why is it important to write about your own life? I don’t want to bother anyone with my own stuff because everyone has it.
It’s important to recognize things and topics that haven’t been written about as much so that when you write about yourself you can advocate for yourself—not just about yourself.
The memoir I am writing is not about myself, but about two other people, but I cannot write about them through them, but only through myself. That is why memory is important to me, because I want to remember everything they said, and although I know it is impossible, I remember important sentences and conversations. Then I include it in the text, let their voices be heard in the text.
How to write about the dead? What to leave out of their lives and what to emphasize? Where do I get the right to write about them? Only my grief and pain give me this right. But it’s selfish! One might add. Yes, it’s selfish, but by writing about the dead we cannot bring them back to life, but some small resurrection is possible. Fighting against oblivion is one of the main motivations for writing about the dead. The other day I saw a broad status of a journalist on Facebook, in which she added some text links that could be used to reconstruct her mother’s identity. The journalist wrote: “I want everyone to know who my mother is!”
However, what is important to us may not be important to someone else, and we don’t know that. We can’t intimidate someone with someone we are close to. Again, the subtlety is in the portrayal of people who are no longer there. Well, I don’t want to write about fighting with them, but I also don’t romanticize them because they were close to me.
Forgetting is a more dangerous territory than remembering. Memory is not the enemy, but forgetting is. When it comes to forgetting, I always quote Borges: “For forgetting is a form of memory…” The file erased by forgetting is inside us, we just have to dive into that dark matter fearlessly.
What drives me to write my memoir is a primal need to fight against forgetting, a need that everyone has. I am the only one who has the good fortune to be a writer, so I can do this with words, with the struggle of art. I don’t have to build the Taj Mahal, or otherwise resist the passage of time.
When all words are broken down into atoms, nothing will matter. Until then, our memories are vital. By remembering and writing about our dear ones, we confirm our humanity. They wish us back to a time when there was no time.
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