Mark Rowlands's Blog, page 6

The Chautauqua Lecture 9

Nothing Brightly Embossed on Them …

These passages advert to the relative persistence of the form of memories over their content. Even when their contents are no longer available to us, memories have a form that continues to guide us, to shape our lives in various ways, for good or for ill. This is what Rilke meant when he wrote of memories becoming part of our blood. There is, however, more to it than merely the persistence of form. There is also an issue of ownership. I suspect the form of my memories is mine in a way that their content can never be. The form of my memories belongs to me in a way their content never can. This, again, was a theme of The Philosopher and the Wolf.

'Often my memories of Brenin are tinged with a strange sort of amazement. It's as if the memories are made up of partially overlapping images: one senses that the images are connected in an important way, but they're too blurred to make out. And then they suddenly converge – snap into focus – like images in an old kaleidoscope. I remember Brenin next to me, striding the touchlines of the rugby pitch in Tuscaloosa. I remember him sitting next to me at the post-match party, when pretty Alabama girls would come up and say: I just love your dog. I remember him running with me through the streets of Tuscaloosa; and when the Tuscaloosa city streets transformed into lanes of an Irish countryside I remember the pack running next to me, easily matching its stride to mine. I remember Brenin, his daughter Tess and his friend Nina, bouncing like salmon through the seas of barley. I remember Brenin dying in my arms in the back of the Jeep. And when the convergence of images happens, I think: is that really me? Was it really me that did those things? Is that really my life?

This realization sometimes strikes me as a faintly surreal discovery. That I am in these memories at all is not given: sometimes it is a fortuitous bonus that must be discovered.'

The Philosopher and the Wolf, p. 242

Memories have both form and content. Their content is something I recall, something of which I am aware when I have the memories. But there is nothing brightly embossed on this content that reads: "Property of Mark Rowlands". Often, the most I can hope for is that some forgotten hand will have scrawled something on the back.

 

The Chautauqua Lecture 8

The Prejudice of Content over Form

Although I wasn't familiar with the work of Rilke at the time, this idea was a continuing theme of The Philosopher and the Wolf. There, I argued that when we think of memory, we fall victim to what I called the "prejudice of conscious recall". We might equally call it the "prejudice of content over form". There is, I argued, a deeper way of remembering than the mere recall of content:

'But there are different ways of remembering. And when we think of memory, we overlook what is most important in favor of what is most obvious. A bird does not fly by flapping its wings: this is merely what gives it forward propulsion. The real principles of flight are to be found in the shape of the bird's wings, and the resulting differences in air pressure on the upper and lower surfaces. But in our early attempts to fly, we overlooked what is most important in favor of what is most obvious: we built flapping machines. Our understanding of memory is similar. We think of memory as conscious experiences whereby we recall past events. But this is just the flapping of wings. These memories are not particularly reliable at the best of times, and are the first to fade as our brains begin their long, but inexorable, descent into indolence; like the flapping of a bird's wings that gradually fades in the distance.'

The Philosopher and the Wolf, pp. 45-6

The raggedy absence through which Tess announces her presence to a time before she was born is a reminder that there is another way of remembering. Here, again, The Philosopher and the Wolf:

'But there is another, deeper and more important, way of remembering: a form of memory that no one ever thought to dignify with a name. This is the memory of a past that has written itself on you, in your character and in the life on which you bring this character to bear. You are not aware of these memories: often they are not even the sorts of things of which you can be conscious. But they, more than anything else, make you what you are. These memories are exhibited in the decisions you make, and the actions you take, and the life that you thereby live. It is in our lives, and not fundamentally in our conscious experiences, that we find the memories of those who are gone. Our consciousness is fickle, not worthy of the task of remembering. When someone is worth remembering, then being a person they have helped fashion and living a life they have helped forge: these are not only the ways in which we remember them; they are the ways in which we honor them.'

The Philosopher and the Wolf, p. 46

The Chautauqua Lecture 7

Glance and Gesture, Nameless

A couple of years after Nina had joined us, Brenin unilaterally decided to augment the pack on his own. Tess joined us 63 days plus around five weeks later. When this photograph was taken, when this memory was frozen, Tess did not yet exist. And yet here she is. There is an absence – a raggedy absence – that you'll see if you turn your attention to the top right hand corner. When you're there, if you track left, you'll also see some scratches and indentations. And if you track all the way to the left of the picture you will see some more. I rescued this photograph from the jaws of Tess – one of many items that I rescued, or failed to rescue from the jaws of Tess. This raggedy absence is Tess, present as absent. It is Tess, Brenin's daughter, impinging on a time before she was born. It is Tess saying, "I am here too", even though she was not yet a glint in her wolf-father's eye.

When she chewed away at this photograph, Tess didn't ruin it: she augmented it, added immeasurably to it. If this photograph were a memory, frozen in time, when Tess gnawed away at it, and thus encroached onto a time before she was born, she did not do so by altering the content of the memory but by altering its form. The content of the memory is what the memory is about, what it depicts. And this is till the same: it is still a depiction of two friends, charging around a beach on a rare sunny Irish day. If this photograph was a memory, Tess would have altered its form – transformed it into a raggedy memory. Every memory has not just content but a form. Every memory has a shape. The memory theory – which I mentioned at the beginning of this talk – claims that our memories make us who we are: distinct, unique people who persist through time. Perhaps the theory is right – although I suspect not – but it is certainly ambiguous. If my memories make me who I am, is this "I" to be found in the content of my memories or in their form?

The German poet, Rainer Maria Rilke once said something that I think is both profoundly beautiful and profoundly true about memories:

"But it is still not enough to have mem­o­ries. One must be able to for­get them, if they are many, and have the great patience to wait for them to come again. For it is not the mem­o­ries them­selves. Only when they become blood in us, glance and gesture, nameless and no longer to be distinguished from ourselves, only then can it happen in a very rare hour, the first word of a line arises out of their midst and strides out of them."

Rainer Maria Rilke, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge

 Rilke is talking here of the importance of memory for a poet, the role that memory plays in artistic creation. But I think his insight is true more generally. The most important memories are the ones that come again, and for this they must first be forgotten. When they come again, when they return to us, it is not in their original way. The memories that come again are the ones that have become part of our blood, "glance and gesture, nameless and no longer to be distinguished from ourselves." Their content has gone, but their form remains. This form shapes us. 

 

The Chautauqua Lecture 6

The next memory is a memory frozen in time, in the form of a photograph. The most important thing about this memory is not what it contains but what it does not.

This photograph was taken at Inchydoney beach, in County Cork, Ireland. On the back, some forgotten hand tells me that it is February 1998. It's an unusual photograph. Shadows are something you don't very often see in Ireland, certainly not in February. Shadows need sun. I lived there for more than five years, and I swear it rained every single day.

I love this frozen memory for so many reasons. To begin with, you get a good idea of the size and power of Brenin. He would have been around seven and a half years old, when this photograph was taken. Nina was roughly eighteen months old at this time, grown to full size, and significantly larger than most female German shepherds or malamutes. As you can see, Brenin dwarfs her. He was probably a little heavy, and the lean and clean angularity of his youth had considerably softened. I've found out that middle age tends to do that to you.

I love this frozen memory also because it provides a useful antidote to a certain – dominant – way of thinking about happiness. We tend to think of happiness as an inner state or process: something that occurs on the inside – in here. If another person is happy, that is not something we can see or know, but only infer or guess. But in this picture, you can – at least I can – see the happiness of these two friends. I don't think happiness is necessarily an inner process at all. I like to think of it more as a field through which we can, if we are lucky, walk or run. I am trading on the on the ambiguity of the word 'field'. There are Irish fields of barley, and French fields of lavender; and Brenin and Nina would run through many of these. But there are also magnetic fields and gravitational fields. The happiness of these animals radiates out from them; it reverberates across the open space – the clearing between us. I am immersed in a field of happiness; surrounded by it, embraced by it. Happiness warms me from the outside in, not the inside out.

But for the purposes of this evening's talk, the most important thing about this frozen memory is not what is in it but what is not – what is absent and yet still present.

 

The Chautauqua Lecture 5

Take Me For a Run or I May Just Have to Kill You

When we moved to Ireland, Brenin had to go into quarantine for six months. This was back in the days before pet passports and the like, and the British and Irish governments apparently had not had time to catch up with the recent invention of a rabies vaccine by Louis Pasteur in 1885. When he was released, I vowed to make the second half of his life as good as it could possibly be, and so decided to get him a friend: one with more legs and a colder nose than I. The result was Nina, a German shepherd/malamute mix. Here she is in Knockduff Lodge – the tiny, drafty cottage in the middle of nowhere that we all shared. She's still quite a young dog (her muzzle went prematurely grey), and here she's in full on "take me for a run or I might just have to kill you" mode.

The Chautauqua Lecture 4

As a result of having to share a life with a rootless and restless philosopher, Brenin became not only a highly educated wolf – the recipient of more free university education than any wolf that ever lived – but also, I suppose, a rather cosmopolitan wolf, moving with me from Alabama to Ireland, on to Wales, England, and finally to France. Here is a memory that is recorded in Running with the Pack: the memory of a run that took place a few days before we moved from Alabama to Ireland.

This is a run of sadness…

… a run of times that have gone and will never come again. This is a run of fear: a run of times as yet unknown. I will soon, in a few short days, be putting Brenin on a plane to Ireland, and quarantine, but at this moment he floats along beside me as we run through the early morning streets of Tuscaloosa. I was twenty-four when I moved here, fresh out of Oxford, and starting my first real job. I began Oxford-style. I went to work in blazer and flannels. I ended up grunge: t-shirts, shorts, flip-flops and a ponytail. I didn't anticipate my first job turning into a seven-year party, but sometimes things have a funny way of turning out. After seven years, over a hundred rugby games, thousands of tequila shooters, and more 25c longneck beers than I can number, I am ready to leave Alabama. When I arrived here, I was younger than many of my students. So, it was perhaps not particularly surprising that I found my way into the University's student rugby team, and the rather surreal sub-culture that surrounds it. But before I knew it I am thirty-one. I'm too old, and the party has moved on. There is only so long you can turn up at student parties – even student rugby parties – without it getting first a little sad, and after that a little creepy. I suspect I have already transgressed the borders of sad, and want to get the hell out of Dodge before I cross over into creepy. No one comes back from creepy.

It is an early Sunday morning. We had a game the previous day, followed by the inevitable festivities, and so I am running off the party of the night before. My memories of those streets are pallid. In this respect they are not inaccurate, for the streets were also pallid. Once the blinding white porched-and-pillared abodes of respectable southern gentility, this part of town has been taken over by the students of the University of Alabama, and the houses are grey and cracked and peeling from all the young lives that have burned brightly within them. But my memories are pallid and peeling for another reason. They were made in a time when I had little need for them. Age is not, in fact, the destroyer of memories; that belongs to youth. Age is the preserver of memories, the reverer of memories. The memories I make become stronger as I get older. The memories I made when I was young are sickly children.

Running with the Pack

 

The Chautauqua Lecture 3

On that note, here is a passage from The Philosopher and the Wolf that records a memory of running. The visual backdrop (not given here) is the Black Warrior River along which Brenin and I would run most mornings.

On Our Runs Together …

I realized something both humbling and profound: I was in the presence of a creature that was, in most important respects, superior to me. My realization was fundamentally an aesthetic one. When we were running, Brenin would glide across the ground with an elegance and economy of movement I have never seen in a dog. When a dog trots, no matter how refined and efficient its gait, there is always a small vertical vector present in the movement of its feet, and this movement of the feet will transmit itself to the line of its shoulders and back. A wolf uses its ankles and large feet to propel it forwards. As a result there is far less movement in its legs – these remain straight and move forwards and backwards but not up and down. So, when Brenin trotted, his shoulders and back remained flat and level. From a distance, it looked like he was floating an inch or two above the ground. When he was especially happy or pleased with himself, this would be converted into an exaggerated bounce. But his default motion was the glide. Brenin is gone now and when I try to picture him it is difficult to furnish this picture with the details necessary to make it a concrete and living representation. But his essence is still there for me. I can still see it: the ghostly wolf in the early-morning Alabama mist, gliding effortlessly over the ground, silent, fluid and serene.

The contrast with the noisy, puffing and leaden-footed thudding of the ape that ran beside him could not have been more pronounced or depressing. I wanted to be able to lope. I wanted to glide across the ground as if I were floating an inch or two above it. But no matter how good at running I became – and I became very good – this was always going to escape me. If you want to understand the soul of the wolf – the essence of the wolf, what the wolf is all about – then you should look at the way the wolf moves. And the crabbed and graceless bustling of the ape, I came to realize with sadness and regret, is an expression of the crabbed and graceless soul that lies beneath.

The Philosopher and the Wolf, pp. 84-6.

 

The Chautauqua Lecture, Part 2

When I was twenty-seven, I did something really rather stupid …

Actually, I almost certainly did many stupid things that year – I was, after all, twenty-seven – but this is the only one I remember because it went on to indelibly shape the future course of my life. When I first met Brenin, I was a young assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Alabama, and he was six-weeks old, a cuddly little teddy bear of a wolf cub. At least, he was sold to me as a wolf, but it is very likely that he was wolf-dog mix. Whatever he was, he grew up.

Brenin had certain – let us call them – idiosyncrasies. If I left him unattended for more than a few minutes, he would destroy anything he could lay his jaws on – which, given that he grew to be thirty-five inches at the withers, included pretty much everything that wasn't screwed to the ceiling. I don't know if he was easily bored, had separation anxiety, or claustrophobia, or some combination of all of these things. But the result was that Brenin had to go everywhere I did. I took him to lectures with me at the University. He would lie down and sleep in the corner of the lecture room: most of the time anyway – when he didn't things would get interesting. For example you can probably imagine the circumstances that caused me to append this little cautionary note to my syllabus:

Note: Please do not pay any attention to the wolf. He will not hurt you. However, if you do have any food in your bags, please ensure that those bags are securely fastened shut.

I can't be certain of this, of course, but I strongly suspect that this was the first time these three sentences had ever appeared on a philosophy syllabus.

Any socializing I did – bars, parties, and I did a lot of that stuff when I was in Alabama – Brenin had to come too. If I went on a date, he would play the lupine gooseberry. For more than a decade Brenin and I lived our lives in each other's pockets.

Allied to his destructive proclivities was his boundless energy. When Brenin was a cub, and then a young wolf, he liked to play a game: he would grab a cushion off the sofa or armchair on which I was sitting, and tear off out the garden, with me in hot pursuit. It was a game of chase, and he loved it. But when he started getting big, he decided to modify the game. One day, sitting in my study – no doubt thinking about something very boring – my reflections were interrupted by a sequence of loud thuds coming from the room that led out to the back yard. Instead of taking a cushion from the armchair and going out the garden, Brenin had decided that it would be far more rewarding to take the rest of armchair too. The thuds were made by the chair, locked firmly in Brenin's jaws, being repeatedly slammed against the doorframe. I think it was at precisely this moment I decided that, all things considered, it would be a really, really good thing if Brenin were constantly exhausted. And so our daily walks together became daily runs. That thud-thud-thud of an armchair against a doorframe marked the beginning of a life of almost daily running.