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Remembering An Old Teacher

December 25, 2023

As I’ve mentioned often, memory is an important asset for a writer – and artists in general. Perhaps we can’t rely on memory for factual accuracy, but its connection with affective impact is undeniable. Moreover, precisely because of their emotive undertones, old memories can be impulsive, subjective, and come unannounced and unexplained. Remembering an old teacher of mine definitely falls under this category.

Like most of us, I’ve had many teachers in my lifetime. Teachers in elementary school, high school, university, and all sorts of other places. Some of them I remember very vaguely, likely because they were forgettable as teachers. Others I remember well for negative reasons – indeed, you can read about a recent example in my post on teaching literature.

Hell, I remember well one of those teachers because once he got some sort of nervous breakdown, took an object out of his bag – which was later revealed to be brass knuckles – and hit me and another dozen students with it, then proceeded to teach physics.

Obviously enough, I also remember many of my old teachers because they were good teachers, supporting my learning and making me feel positive about the overall experience.

But there is one specific teacher whom I remember well, and positively, though I was at his class only once. Remembering an old teacher who only taught you once isn’t very common, and the fact that this memory came out of nowhere these days felt interesting enough to write a post about.

remembering an old teacher; ai render of an anime classroom
The memory of that old teacher came suddenly, almost subconsciously. The idea to use an AI render of an anime classroom was as impulsive, and so it felt suitably random
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Experience and Memory: a Problematic Relationship

May 2, 2022

It’s impossible to experience without memory. Think about it: If you had no memory beyond the immediate, ever-ghostly “now”, how could you remember how a sunset looked like? How could you remember your first kiss, or some important achievement?

Moreover, it’s not only experiencing that, without memory, would suffer. Learning would be difficult if not impossible. Much of what constitutes our humanity would be absent.

And yet, there’s something problematic about the coexistence of experience and memory. I’m of course referring to the fact that memory taints the experience it’s supposed to help us remember.

We often think we remember things very well, very accurately, maintaining an objective view to their real essence. As the perceptive, thinking reader that you are, I’m sure you’ve discovered many problems in the sentence above.

The truth is, we don’t remember things all that well, not very accurately, and it’s quite by definition that we can’t hold an objective view, let alone to the “real essence” of things – good luck defining that, especially for emotions, thoughts, and states of mind.

As I’ve said before, memory is crucial for writing – either fiction or nonfiction. So, how do we go about resolving the paradoxical coexistence between experience and memory?

experience memory
This image from the 80s helps me remember some scenes of my early childhood. But the memories are a poor guide for creating a factual foundation. Still, it helps me (re)create a non-fact based reality which is still useful
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Every Book Is Autobiographical – or Should Be

January 3, 2022

(Auto)biographies, autobiographical novels, “based on a true story”… There seem to be many ways of more or less describing the same thing. At least that’s what one may think. However, in actual fact, all these are very different modes of writing, with unique requirements. More importantly, for the purposes of this post, most people seem to ignore a very crucial thing: Every book is autobiographical!

This might feel an obviously wrong thing to say. “Hang on, Chris”, you might think. “How on earth can every book be autobiographical? What about American Psycho, or even some science fiction – say, Solaris? Surely, you’re not claiming that Bret Easton Ellis has killed people or that Stanisław Lem traveled to another planet?”

The answer is – to the best of my knowledge – no. Yet both these two examples, just like every other book ever written by any human is deep down an autobiographical book. The reason?

Because every author, even when writing fiction, puts a piece of themselves in it.

Or at least, they ought to! Because about the only way to fail entirely at writing fiction is to not allow yourself – your subjectivity, your experiences, your flaws and vices and insecurities – to become part of the narrative. Writing an autobiographical book the way I just defined it is the easiest way for any author (and especially so for less experienced ones) to introduce affect in their narratives.

Let’s see why that happens and how to control it.

autobiographical book

When it comes to all books being autobiographical, it’s not out experiences that are important, but remembering and reflecting on our experiences
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