Memory Piece
I checked out Memory Piece by Lisa Ko because I have an interest in collective memory and nostalgia — particularly about places. In fact, I am currently trying to refine one of my essays that uses those early-days “Remember when?” or “You know you’re from…” Facebook groups as a framework. The novel is fine — not my favorite, but of course that can’t be the standard for every book — but what I’m particularly intrigued by is Ko’s exploration of how technology mediates our memories and what changes more…a person or the place. In other words, when people like to bemoan “the way things were” especially in light of the structural development of a location, has the place truly changed demonstrably? Or as we age are we more apt to feel out of sync with our memories? (Just some light thoughts to start off your day…)
As an example: My hometown is a suburb, but now technically considered an “edge city.” Thanks to rapid growth, particularly in the tech sector, its downtown is bigger and more bustling than Uptown Charlotte (that’s what center city is called here 🙃), just as a reference point. It’s an easy target for old-timers to grumble about, yet when I last drove there (keeping in mind that I’ve only been back maybe 5 times in 30 years), it was like muscle memory took over. Even if the buildings were different, the “feel” of the roads and the natural landscape came back to me naturally. The place had changed…but, at its basest, by how much? My own memories still felt “true.”
You may like Memory Piece if you’re intrigued by the tech scene of the 90s and if you don’t mind a little dystopian surveillance paranoia. (The last part of the book takes place in the 2040s.) My ability to enjoy the plot stuttered a bit, but I sure loved Ko’s devotion to an esoteric topic, kicked off by one of the protagonist’s performance art pieces: She writes down all her memories for seven hours a day and after a year burns them all.
“You could spend a lifetime subsisting on the fumes of your own memory.”
originally published on instagram