One would assume that each such experience is a one-off. One would assume that if Proust had taken up the habit of eating tea-soaked madeleines every day, he would not have experienced daily clockwork revelations of le temps perdu. One would assume that only a relatively uncommon stimulus would have the power to call to mind a specific previous instance of the same.
"One would assume," I say -- would, were it not for direct experience to the contrary.
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A little over five years ago, I had a strange dream in which I saw on TV the face of a large beast (I thought it was a whale) with multiple eyes, a row on the left and a row on the right, and with catfish-like feelers around its mouth. Less than 24 hours after the dream, I did in fact see such a face on TV, while watching the Keanu Reeves movie 47 Ronin at the home of some of my wife's relatives. This experience, an apparent example of dream-precognition, is documented in my post "A beast with many eyes." After the movie I went out for a walk around their neighborhood.
The relatives at whose home I saw the movie live fairly close to our own house, but we don't visit them that often. However, I pass through that general area several times a month, and every time I get within a half-mile or so of their home -- the area in which I had walked after seeing 47 Ronin -- it triggers an memory of impressive (if perhaps not quite Proustian) vividness. I remember walking along the road, passing a rather handsome stray Formosan mountain dog, seeing a white sedan drive past me and then turn left. I remember a long row of Roman-style banners which had been put out to advertise for an election (and which have long since been taken down), and how their fluttering in the dark struck me as somehow uncanny. And I remember what I was thinking at the time -- mostly about the many-eyed beast, of course, and the dream which had anticipated it.
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What would cause this sort of recurring Madeleine Effect? My guess is that it has to do with the fact that, while the stimulus is one I encounter often, it is never accompanied by any other memorable events which might compete with the original. When I visit those relatives, actually being in the house where I saw the movie does not trigger any vivid memories -- probably because all kinds of different things have happened in that house, of which watching 47 Ronin is just one. The house is not haunted by a single dominating memory. On the roads near their house, though, nothing ever happens. I just pass through. I've only been walking there that one time, which was memorable because of the uncanny experience I had just had, and which imparted its uncanniness to the otherwise unremarkable scenery. The first time I passed through after that, I experienced an unusually vivid memory -- which was itself a memorable experience, and thus reinforced the memory of the original walk. Aside from my walk, and my vivid memories of that walk, nothing at all memorable has ever happened to me in that area, so no real new memories are formed to swamp out the original one.
2 comments:
I get a similar thing when brushing my teetth - a few certain places come to mind, linked with specific visits to them (e.g. in the old City of London approaching Smithfield Market from the south, in 1984, before a spell of working at St Bartholomew's Hospital).
As you say, there are no other competing thoughts - else I suppose I would be thinking of them instead and would not notice the absence.
The process does not seem significant as such, beyond the fact that I must have been awake and self-remembering, open to experience, at these times - and so these became a part of the golden thread.
BTW I and my son (unexpectedly) enjoyed 47 Ronin - I found the depiction of Loyalty to be convincing and moving.
I unexpectedly enjoyed it, too. It was almost universally panned by critics.
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