Hi everyone!
In this Issue:
On memory and art
‘HM’ by Kerry Tribe
News and events
SJW recommends
The Writers’ Lodge
On Memory and Art
This is an edited version of something I wrote for The Guardian. I hope you enjoy it!
Memories define us. They are our autobiography, they form our identity, our sense of who we are. Without them it’s impossible to both make sense of change and to imagine a future in any concrete way. Yet most of us take them for granted. Remembering happens automatically, we think of our memories as a repository, a sort of video recording of our lives to date. We think that almost any scene is available for recall, to be reviewed and re-experienced, if only we could find it. But how can this be? How can decades of experience be stored in this one organ, and how faithful is the recording?
It’s now believed that memory is not a single process. We have short term memories which fades within 20 seconds or so, and a long term store where memories are coded for future recall and accessible months or even years hence. Both result from changes in the neurons of the brain.
So if our memories -- the stories through which we understand ourselves and make sense of existence -- are encoded physically in the billions of nerve cells in our brain, what happens when something goes wrong? Amnesia cuts to the heart of identity, and therefore it has long been of interest to writers, artists and filmmakers. Both my own Before I Go to Sleep and the Christopher Nolan film Memento are easy examples, but there are many others.
Here is a short clip of one, which I find fascinating.
H.M. is the work of Kerry Tribe, a Los Angeles based visual artist. Its title refers to Henry Molaison, arguably the most famous amnesiac in history and the inspiration behind my debut. Tribe’s film is not a straightforward telling of Molaison’s story, however. It’s a single film that plays through two adjacent projectors with a 20 second delay between them, so that the viewer sees simultaneous projections of two different parts of the same reel. It recreates the cognitive dissonance of amnesia, and the effect is haunting and disconcerting.
Tribe began work on the film in 2006, two years before Molaison’s death, and worked closely with Professor Suzanne Corkin, the neuroscientist who studied and looked after him for over fifty years. ‘I travelled anywhere I could that I knew had been significant to Henry— his childhood neighborhood and high school, lakes he may have swam in as a boy, the department where he was studied at MIT— with a Bolex camera. All that footage was shot on film.’
At the end of the film the voiceover tells us that Henry was never filmed, photographed or videotaped. The moment is jarring, as the viewer feels they’ve just spent fifteen minutes in his company. I asked Tribe how she made the film. ‘The reenactments that feature HM are staged with actors on a set and shot on digital video. Everything said is “real” in the sense that all of HM’s dialog comes directly from transcripts, and Professor Corkin plays herself. And those funny looking tests you see HM performing in my film are the real objects he used in testing back the 1960s. But the hands belong to an actor.’ Molaison was in a nursing home by the time she started working on the project, she adds, and no longer verbal. Plus, ‘his privacy had been carefully guarded for decades and I didn’t want to compromise that. But Darryl Sandeen does a fantastic performance as HM - nearly everyone assumes it’s him.’
News and events
Just a reminder that I’ll be appearing at the Capital Crime Festival 2022, at Battersea Park in London. I’ll be on the panel “Hook, Line & Twist: Entering the warped minds of crime fiction’s ‘big idea’ authors”, along with Tim Weaver, Alice Feeney, Stuart Turton and Hervé Le Tellier. Take a look at the full schedule here.
SJW recommends
Thirty-three-year-old Todd is playing at the beach with his son, Anthony, when he catches sight of an approaching figure. Instantly, he recognises Jack, his high school tormentor. Radiant, repentant, and overjoyed to have 'run into' Todd, Jack suggests a meal to catch up. And can he spend the night?
What follows is a fast-paced story of obsession and suspense, as Jack gaslights his way back into Todd's life, pushing his old friend to the brink.
Conner Habib's disturbing and emotionally riveting debut is a horror novel about partners and friends, fathers and sons, bullies and scapegoats.
The Writers’ Lodge
“Chock full of brilliant insight and advice. It’s things like this that help to keep the flame alight.”
Are you a writer? Do you want to write?
In the last few issues we’ve been looking at:
Getting to grips with plot and structure
How many acts does your story need?
How to get going when you’re not in the mood to write
Working with an agent
The Writers’ Lodge is a nurturing and supportive newsletter for anyone who is writing, or who is considering embarking on a writing project and wondering whether they have what it takes, or may even just be considering their first tentative steps into writing fiction.
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Happy reading/writing!