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Is purpose but the slave to memory?

Until recently, memory has been good to me; my neurons have behaved themselves and guided questions along the quickest route to wherever the appropriate answers were stored. They still do, unless I drive too slowly and the road is already closed for an accident so I am sent on a detour along a gravel lane somewhere. I can often see the tops of the answers in the distance as I drive -their hats, or perhaps a tuft of hair as I struggle along the bumpy road- but although I usually show up eventually, I’m almost out of gas, or worse, arrive there having forgotten why I left in the first place.

My memory can be especially embarrassing when I am speaking to people younger than me who seem to live right beside their answers and for whom a quick grab snares a handful with little effort. Older people with their gnarled reach, appear to understand though, or at least forget what they’ve asked me long before I’ve left the winding bumpy road. Conversations like that can be fragile creatures if continuation requires answers that have not doddled along behind like distracted dogs sniffing at other things along the way.

By the way, I should point out that as an elder I’m allowed hyperbole, and excuses are acceptable; there is an unwritten tolerance for any of us who forget the correct words and instead offer hastily purchased bouquets of neologisms in their stead. I’m usually quite proud of mine, although where they come from only the neurons know.

But still, I long for the days when my sesquipedalian vocabulary sufficed and I was not so frequently reduced to using metaphors under pressure, or resorting to ad hoc scaffolding to colour my thoughts rather than allowing embarrassing gaps in the stonework of my sentences. It’s a pride thing, I guess.

I’ve been reassured by the younger cohort that there are solutions for the prevention of memory holes however: everything from obsessive Sudoku-solving, to religious tithing to the New York Times website for the privilege of completing its crossword Eucharists; from walking over 10,000 steps per day, or whatever, to unfailingly exercising the part of the brain that both hears things and is also the apparent repository for short-term memories. Unfortunately this latter exercise would require a hearing test, an affordable audiologist, and a sizeable inheritance to pay for the hearing aid.

They all seem like expensive placebos, though, so I’ve given up trying to remember them. I exercise on my elliptical, I turn the TV volume up high for the documentaries, and read Michel de Montaigne in bed at night. I mean, I’m trying, right? And anyway, if I were also doing all the stuff my friends keep recommending, I’d have no time or space left in my head to store anything else. Memories require room. Lots of room.

But I haven’t given up, yet; I’m always on the lookout for new approaches -especially those which are simple enough to offer me hope and don’t require a second mortgage, or long strings of syllables to memorize. I accept that I’m getting old, and that some of my parts are no doubt well past their best-by dates. It’s just that… well, they’re mine and I’m kind of used to working around them: exapting when I can, ignoring when I can’t.

Sometimes, though, when I struggle unsuccessfully to retrieve a memory -a name, perhaps- I find it floating on the surface a few moments later, after I’ve forgotten what I needed it for. Still, after that initial struggle, it is usually more discoverable if I want to remember it again. Memories are like that, though; they are sometimes just hiding somewhere intact as ever, like a child playing hide and seek. And as any experienced child soon learns, mixing up the clues to finding her, makes for a better game, but if she keeps hiding in the same place, her friends eventually catch on.

I have read that there are at least two components to a memory: its retrieval strength, and its storage strength.[i] ‘A memory is never simply strong or weak. Rather, the ease with which you can summon up a memory (its retrieval strength) is different from how fully represented it is in your mind (its storage strength).’ Forgetting is ‘less like a cliff slowly collapsing into the sea, and more like a house deep in the woods that becomes harder and harder to find. The house might be perfectly sound – that is, its storage strength remains high – but if the path leading to it becomes surrounded by equally plausible paths leading the wrong way, one’s formerly clear mental map can transform into a maze.’ It makes sense not giving up the search for another trail. And furthermore, it would seem that by ‘carrying out a challenging retrieval, you can increase a given memory’s storage strength and also increase your chances of retrieving it in the future.’ Apparently, it’s also important to take a break from the effort –‘spacing’ as it’s rather unimaginatively called- both for remembering things like the name of someone to whom you’ve just been introduced, as well as for studying a topic for an exam.[ii] In other words, go have lunch, think about dessert, and then wander around in the woods again to see if you can find another path to the house… even the same path actually. Anyway, it’s supposed to last longer than just cramming for a test the night before. I’m not sure how well it works for remembering names, though.

I find I worry less about forgetting nowadays because I suppose I cheat a little. Like Gretel’s Hansel, I try to leave little crumbs along the way. I try to associate the memory once I retrieve it with something -the name of the composer Scriabin with a mountain scree for example (don’t ask); or maybe to remember the name of the Italian baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi, I the use the word ‘gentle’ as a crumb because some of her paintings were certainly not. Or for the path to remembering a name like, say, Lillooet, (a small town in the mountains of British Columbia) I usually think of it being a ‘little wet’ because it isn’t… Clever stuff like that.

In a twisted sort of way then, I suppose I’m not following the usual paths to these names, so I figure that qualifies them as challenging retrievals, eh? Well, whatever, it seems to work. The problem though, is remembering what crumbs I used, and where I put them. Sometimes I just give up looking and go for a run instead; by the time I get back, the word, the name, the memory is usually waiting for me at the door. It’s just that by then, I can’t remember the context… But hey, I remembered, eh?

Age is a strange country, don’t you think?

[i] https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20221121-the-benefits-of-being-forgetful

[ii] Ibid.

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