Memory Palace
July 9, 2008
The book I’m reading, The Madonnas of Leningrad, is set partly in Leningrad during the German seige of 1941. Marina is a docent at the Hermitage museum, and she and others prepare for the advancing German army by packing away the paintings for safekeeping. Only the empty frames remain on the walls. Later, to mentally escape the terror of the German bombing raids, she begins to recreate a “memory palace” in her mind, filled with the missing paintings which she remembers in painstaking detail.
This has me thinking about memory – the way that certain images or sounds can trigger powerful memories seemingly out of the blue. For me, I’ve always thought about certain songs and books as being part of a lengthy “soundtrack” to my life. All of high school was set to R.E.M and The Smiths. Any 10,000 Maniacs song puts me instantly back on Martha’s Vineyard in the summer of 1988. (I can even picture the tape case, which always had some gritty sand inside of it.) My drive across the country when I moved to California will forever be associated with reading Wallace Stegner’s Angle of Repose. Cormac McCarthy = my first apartment; John Banville’s The Sea = Lila’s first days home from the hospital. And on and on.
What’s on your soundtrack?
July 9, 2008 at 2:41 pm
book soundtrack.. there are a few – but when I read Time Travelers Wife – and I cried and cried at the end I thought this can’t be just the book. The next day I found out I was preggers with Mia. Ahhh hormonal AND a great book. Music? Girl – dont get me started. It does involve a lot of hairmetal though \m/
July 10, 2008 at 11:01 am
High school for me was Dave Matthews; college: One Week by Barenaked Ladies.
July 10, 2008 at 11:14 am
Richard Marx: Played before a new Kids On The Block concert when I was in middle school.
Stairway to heaven: First kiss
Reba McIntyre: Senior Year in HS
Gin Blossoms: College
July 10, 2008 at 11:53 am
oh, books, books, books – Angle of Repose, *that* was a good book.
Mixed tapes have so many memories associated with them – such an artform, something that is now probably lost (an itunes list doesn’t quite cut it)
In my Tribe/Green were my go-to music for high school
July 10, 2008 at 10:18 pm
I want to borrow that book when you’re done!