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What do you think it is that makes us forget?
My friend asked me this question at an event the other day. We were both taking notes on the author’s talk—me in my notebook, her in her phone—and weren’t sure either of us would remember anything meaningful afterward. It wasn’t for lack of meaning in the words we heard, but more, I think, the excess of it. As if we were asking: how can we make space for more?
This week I was reading about managing time in fiction and I left with some ideas—and some notes—but particularly with this quote sitting at the front of my mind:
“We write the scenes that are most resonant, then rely on summary to pitch us forward in time, until we arrive at another important moment.”
The author, Rachel Beanland, is talking about how we can work with the information between moments that strike the reader and move plot forward. It’s about where we place our focus. By “most resonant,” she’s saying that we can use time in narrative to leap from one meaningful moment to the next. It would seem natural to emphasize the things that are clearest to us, that reach a depth within us. Elements of a thing that ring true and require our attention.
Something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately is how the writers I love are often exploring the same themes over and over from different angles. I consider Annie Ernaux and I think of intimacy, time, and realism; I look at Yōko Ogawa and think of how femininity can take a bend toward something cruel, or how the impact of history can live in the body.
At this very talk—the one with my friend and I forgetting and not wanting to forget—the author spoke of how she is always writing toward grief and transformation. Grief and transformation would always be in her work despite form, time, readership, or no readership.
Do we really need to worry so much about making space for more, when it seems we are already chasing what is inevitably most resonant to us, making that where we find our attention?
“I already forgot half of what I wrote down,” my friend lamented. "You probably remembered the parts I didn’t, though,” I said. Because what’s also notable about the exchange is that my parts could complete hers, and vice-versa. What she remembered could be different from what I did, and that creates a communal experience of memory. A communal experience of resonance.
I think we often get caught up thinking that someone else is has abilities or strengths far beyond ours. That we are the ones that can’t make enough space. But what if this actually meant that those around us just have complementary parts, and we’re making space for more…together? That it’s a collective act? I can’t be bigger than I am. I know that. I can’t will my brain to be more engaged than it is—because it is, it is already engaged. What I can do is make space for the meaning I make of an experience, and be curious about how someone else experienced the same thing. And if they overlap? What a joy. There is always room for more joy.
Read My Work
“Fighting With God,” published by Paloma Magazine.
“I Wish I Could Go to Costco With My Parents,” recently published by Funicular Magazine.
“The Clearing,” in issue four of Archetype: A Literary Journal.
“Everything Belongs,” in Prairie Fire’s 2023 Summer edition.
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