The Montegonian: Bringing Back that Old School Investigative Journalism!
Montego Bay Jamaica's Official News Hub... Chronicling News and Life in Jamaica's Second City!
Showing posts with label vintage. Show all posts
Showing posts with label vintage. Show all posts
Monday, September 23, 2013
Monday, May 20, 2013
Behind the music on a very popular Montegonian: Jimmy Cliff
When he was 14 years old he moved to Kingston...
Read the full article!
Wednesday, January 07, 2009
Threnody
“crossing that bridge with lessons I've learnt, time is a space between me and you”
~Seal: Prayer for the Dying
“Those who are dead, are not dead, they're just living in my head”
~Coldplay: 43
Good Afternoon, Good Evening and Good Morning, I hope you'll be still enjoying the lovely weather when you get a chance to read this, be huddled at that seat at the shop, or sombrely warming up to that shot of JB which you'll be happy to have excuse to drink, “A Wedda, A Wedda! U nuh see seh time chilly.” Or maybe you're on your verandah, I hope the breeze doesn't hamper your reading too much, but where ever you are I beg and beseige thee, take a very solemn walk with me, a path some of you maybe vaguely acquainted with, some of you not so acquainted with. Our scenario today reminds me of a Stephen King series I read named The Dark Tower. It is a tale of a Gunslinger, who has seen all his friends die and seen his country and his lovers, home and family dessimated and is on the chase to reach a place called The Dark Tower, to defeat a Red King and call out the names of all his fallen friends and reset or restore the order to things. And some things stood out in that book for me and one was an expression he used frequently to describe the changes that he saw took place in his world, and it was this “The world has moved on.” He never said from what, but it was from the point he had marked as the better years of his life.
Now death and loss are things I've always known of, however in my early twenties I realized that I was ill-prepared for it. Because I never realized that as early as 19 and 20, so many of the ones I knew would be gone, and I've come to realize that I have lived under the naïve belief that me and all my friends would grow old, but now I know better. This year I've had to learn of death all too intimately.
A threnody is a song or hymn of mourning composed or performed as a memorial to a dead person. The term originates from the Greek word threnoidia, from threnos (lament) + oide (song). Ultimately from Proto-Indo-European root wed(uued or ooed)- (to speak) that is also the forefather of such words as ode, tragedy, comedy, parody, melody, and rhapsody. And that is what this article is gentle people all across the land. My Threnody for Paradise Lost. I don't know if it is because we are in a leap year or what but the tragedies this year seemed a many. It all start last year this time. Decemeber 7 to be exact, when a police battalion rolled through Paradise and killed one Cedric Thorpe, also known to many as Goosey. I had seen him, just an hour before, stood and spoke, then continued my journey downtown, by the time I had reached the top of Union Street, people were talking about a Goosey dead, and I paid it absolutely no mind, after I had just spoken to him, must be another one. By the time I was at Perry Street my phone was ringing of the chart, “Yuh hear she dem just kill Mankind!” That set the trend for the year to come, I would be standing out by Likkle Dread loitering before getting food when a friend of mine Homie's father would drive pass in his little red car as per usual, stop get a cigarette at the shop up the road, he would complain of not feeling well, and I would watch him drive off in his little red car, only to have a heart attack and crash less than 4 seconds later. He would drive off into a column and crash and die of heart complication. Just like that life will blindside you, and it is just earth runnings and the way of the world, and leaves us to wonder, what is man...
I would later have to watch my close parri, suffer through the loss of his mother. Then to bear witness to some kind of secret wars being waged in Paradise and watching innocent and young lives spin out and spill out in bloodshed, and then to not really know, what secret games and deeds they had played and been punished for. To watch the life of Sticky Bean get snuffed out for mistaken identity on a rainy day, to hear Bess a shopkeeper's life being wasted away at 6:50 in the morn while drinking tea, to get up the following morning to hear a pretty little girl you watch grow, offer proper council and advice when you could, Madeeks, get wasted away at the same taxi stand you and everyone whoe probably knew her, all before the age of 20. To then watch the spirit of a community die. Shortly after some respit from the urban prowl only to return and hear my good friend, a very spirited old man, very short thin and pixie like, full of verve and life a man that sat amongst thieves, murderers, weed heads, rum heads, youths, gun toters and average Joe's, a Roman Catholic at that, who would always be in spirited debates with me and my entourage about politics and God, and it was always good natured and never got bitter, no matter who we persecuted his belief or angle. His name was Dandy... and he lived by that name, he was always dandy. No one knows how Dandy real died, he just became ill, thin and died. In the space of 2 months that I had not really seen him, he just upped and died. Then there are Jerome (Amoy) and Gwangy (who the front page of the Mirror named Wong by some error in calculation or translation and they even gave him a career as a cane vendor). They gave away their life carelessly by persistent pursuit of bad things. But they were human, they had families and friends, some of whom I am very close to, I knew them. They died. Byron Balfour who I knew, he wasn't fond of me who wrote next to me in the Mirror write on the next page there, so close to me in some regard he died too. And my cousin/unlce on Tate Street... my fallen friends and soldiers are many.
Most days I feel like Jeremiah, the weeping prophet, weeping for all the sorrows I've seen in this world, all the lives we must touch and live to see shattered, for all those who curdle up on the street, under taxi stands and make the concrete jungle their posture pedic, for all my friends who have tossed way their lives to coke and now roam the town like ghosts for all that to die, for it has said, many more will have to suffer and many more will have to die, don't ask me why.
I close with a Peter Gabriel song “I Grieve,”
“it was only one hour ago
it was all so different then
there's nothing yet has really sunk in
looks like it always did
this flesh and bone
it's just the way that you would tied in
now there's no-one home
life carries on
in the people i meet
in everyone that's out on the street
in all the dogs and cats
in the flies and rats
in the rot and the rust
in the ashes and the dust
life carries on and on and on and on
life carries on and on and on”
Yannick Pessoa
yannickpessoa@yahoo.com
http://yahnyk.blogspot.com
~Seal: Prayer for the Dying
“Those who are dead, are not dead, they're just living in my head”
~Coldplay: 43
Good Afternoon, Good Evening and Good Morning, I hope you'll be still enjoying the lovely weather when you get a chance to read this, be huddled at that seat at the shop, or sombrely warming up to that shot of JB which you'll be happy to have excuse to drink, “A Wedda, A Wedda! U nuh see seh time chilly.” Or maybe you're on your verandah, I hope the breeze doesn't hamper your reading too much, but where ever you are I beg and beseige thee, take a very solemn walk with me, a path some of you maybe vaguely acquainted with, some of you not so acquainted with. Our scenario today reminds me of a Stephen King series I read named The Dark Tower. It is a tale of a Gunslinger, who has seen all his friends die and seen his country and his lovers, home and family dessimated and is on the chase to reach a place called The Dark Tower, to defeat a Red King and call out the names of all his fallen friends and reset or restore the order to things. And some things stood out in that book for me and one was an expression he used frequently to describe the changes that he saw took place in his world, and it was this “The world has moved on.” He never said from what, but it was from the point he had marked as the better years of his life.
Now death and loss are things I've always known of, however in my early twenties I realized that I was ill-prepared for it. Because I never realized that as early as 19 and 20, so many of the ones I knew would be gone, and I've come to realize that I have lived under the naïve belief that me and all my friends would grow old, but now I know better. This year I've had to learn of death all too intimately.
A threnody is a song or hymn of mourning composed or performed as a memorial to a dead person. The term originates from the Greek word threnoidia, from threnos (lament) + oide (song). Ultimately from Proto-Indo-European root wed(uued or ooed)- (to speak) that is also the forefather of such words as ode, tragedy, comedy, parody, melody, and rhapsody. And that is what this article is gentle people all across the land. My Threnody for Paradise Lost. I don't know if it is because we are in a leap year or what but the tragedies this year seemed a many. It all start last year this time. Decemeber 7 to be exact, when a police battalion rolled through Paradise and killed one Cedric Thorpe, also known to many as Goosey. I had seen him, just an hour before, stood and spoke, then continued my journey downtown, by the time I had reached the top of Union Street, people were talking about a Goosey dead, and I paid it absolutely no mind, after I had just spoken to him, must be another one. By the time I was at Perry Street my phone was ringing of the chart, “Yuh hear she dem just kill Mankind!” That set the trend for the year to come, I would be standing out by Likkle Dread loitering before getting food when a friend of mine Homie's father would drive pass in his little red car as per usual, stop get a cigarette at the shop up the road, he would complain of not feeling well, and I would watch him drive off in his little red car, only to have a heart attack and crash less than 4 seconds later. He would drive off into a column and crash and die of heart complication. Just like that life will blindside you, and it is just earth runnings and the way of the world, and leaves us to wonder, what is man...
I would later have to watch my close parri, suffer through the loss of his mother. Then to bear witness to some kind of secret wars being waged in Paradise and watching innocent and young lives spin out and spill out in bloodshed, and then to not really know, what secret games and deeds they had played and been punished for. To watch the life of Sticky Bean get snuffed out for mistaken identity on a rainy day, to hear Bess a shopkeeper's life being wasted away at 6:50 in the morn while drinking tea, to get up the following morning to hear a pretty little girl you watch grow, offer proper council and advice when you could, Madeeks, get wasted away at the same taxi stand you and everyone whoe probably knew her, all before the age of 20. To then watch the spirit of a community die. Shortly after some respit from the urban prowl only to return and hear my good friend, a very spirited old man, very short thin and pixie like, full of verve and life a man that sat amongst thieves, murderers, weed heads, rum heads, youths, gun toters and average Joe's, a Roman Catholic at that, who would always be in spirited debates with me and my entourage about politics and God, and it was always good natured and never got bitter, no matter who we persecuted his belief or angle. His name was Dandy... and he lived by that name, he was always dandy. No one knows how Dandy real died, he just became ill, thin and died. In the space of 2 months that I had not really seen him, he just upped and died. Then there are Jerome (Amoy) and Gwangy (who the front page of the Mirror named Wong by some error in calculation or translation and they even gave him a career as a cane vendor). They gave away their life carelessly by persistent pursuit of bad things. But they were human, they had families and friends, some of whom I am very close to, I knew them. They died. Byron Balfour who I knew, he wasn't fond of me who wrote next to me in the Mirror write on the next page there, so close to me in some regard he died too. And my cousin/unlce on Tate Street... my fallen friends and soldiers are many.
Most days I feel like Jeremiah, the weeping prophet, weeping for all the sorrows I've seen in this world, all the lives we must touch and live to see shattered, for all those who curdle up on the street, under taxi stands and make the concrete jungle their posture pedic, for all my friends who have tossed way their lives to coke and now roam the town like ghosts for all that to die, for it has said, many more will have to suffer and many more will have to die, don't ask me why.
I close with a Peter Gabriel song “I Grieve,”
“it was only one hour ago
it was all so different then
there's nothing yet has really sunk in
looks like it always did
this flesh and bone
it's just the way that you would tied in
now there's no-one home
life carries on
in the people i meet
in everyone that's out on the street
in all the dogs and cats
in the flies and rats
in the rot and the rust
in the ashes and the dust
life carries on and on and on and on
life carries on and on and on”
Yannick Pessoa
yannickpessoa@yahoo.com
http://yahnyk.blogspot.com
I Will Remember You CONT'D
Well ladies and gentle people I have to admit last week's article seems to have struck a chord with many people and to think I almost discarded it. Hmmm, now what artistes mean when they say they never know which song on the album is going to be the hit single. Yeah but I digress we were speaking on memory weren't we? Yah I think so! So... yeah we as a people, Jamaican's and Montegonians have forgotten who we are, and just it has always been my belief that it is part of the charter and mandate of Rastafari to be the axis of cultural resistance to European ideas that have been proven historically to never benefit our people and in essence is what a “Far-I” friend of mine, a certain I-an Harper was saying to me the other night when he said Rasta is the memory of the people, and with all truth that is what we are, we the cultural residue and remnants of what it was to be truly African and we are the last desperate hope fighting to keep the remnants alive and to harken the mind of the people to a time before European dominance and to the fight to achieve a sustainable future of our independent thinking and devising! So we as a people have forgotten, but I do remember you!
And last week I spoke of Tate Street and it seemed to resonate with people too. And it seems coincidentally that as the fate would have it Tate Street has proven to be some kind of axis and focal point of energy and if I were one for serious astrological contemplation and in the world of spirits and omens then I would think it had a meaning. As it represents in my mind the golden age of Montego Bay, maybe because of its old world appearance and dimming glimmer of yesteryear charm or maybe its because my mother lived there and she had a million and one fond stories of playing cross from Jarret Park or going to park or when she went to Girl's School, is that Barracks or Corinaldi, I can never remember, then there was my old teacher Ms. Nelson who though teaching at Mt. Alvernia Prep, always said “When I was at Corinaldi yuh see...” then there was my old Aunt Ellis who lived at Tate Street and My mother's hair dresser Patsy lived around the corner, and I loved Satdays at Tate Street because my Grand Aunt Ellis had and eternal supply of soda, coincidentally my Aunt Ellis' son, my cousin-uncle died just recently, so a whole host of the Tate Street cast was at my door step in Paradise, I can't escape. And just when I thought the fates couldn't cross more at Tate Street, here comes my brand new co-worker a young Ms. Wiggan who happens to live on Tate Street and then there is the fact that now when your on Tate Street you have to look in the Mirror, literally and it seems I am compelled to do so figuratively and mentally as well. Seems Tate Streets is about Mirrors and reflections and reflecting. So it seems Tate Street, I remember you.
But I want to get back to the point about the golden age of Montego Bay, because I believe many of today's Montegonians don't remember a Mobay when it was a young city booming with potential and mellow balance of country and town, I think the youth of today have been saddled with the burden of carrying memories of a Mobay that is one big disorganized shanty town and urban nightmare, a failure in planning and myriad of haphazard malls and plazas chucked up on stilts and residence that are concreted to each other and roads riddled with potholes and a city infested with cocaine, crime, homosexuals, dialer, scammers, vain and trivial material pursuits and pursuants. How many will know Coral Wall and Gi-gi beach, how terrible it is to know that many will only know Aquasol and never remember again, Walter Fletcher. How many will forget the ampitheatre that gave way to highways, how many won't know that before civilization and rampant malignant urban sprawl, before the Central Business District (CBD) started its march out ward that Jarret, Tate, McCathy, Hart Street were prime real estate and proud residential communities, instead of rotting board houses and make shift garages and ad hoc concrete creations. How many have forgotten, how many will remember, I remember.
Memories are important people, they are the marks and the milestones and the landmarks in our lives, minds and history that make us who we are, that carry us to this inevitable point, it is what must be used to propel us into the future, but I fear if you cannot remember, ifyou do not remember, then you shall be lost, if you have left your future to be governed by someone else, if you don't know where you have been coming from, what is you liked and cherished, who it is you are, what you are, then you can never keep it, you can never maintain it and you can never restore it. You have name reference or frame work upon which to draw to map and chart your future, for if you trust it to outsiders, Europeans, Americans, gods, Barracks, or any other would be Messiahs then my friend, remember at least this, you are lost. But I remember.
And to all my friends, soldiers, comrades who are wondering why Yannick is M.I.A. don't worry, to all my friends I haven't seen in eons, to even the people who glimpse and barely touched or passed by in my life, to childhood friends from wonder years ago, like Ms. Tamora Decqarish ( I think I lost on the spelling there but), mans and mans from College weh mi nuh see inna years, Cherry, Lisa Thorpe, to Ms. T. Campbell, to even those who malice me, and who feel like dem a mi enemy, every single souljah... I and I remember YOU!
Ancient Memories come on into my soul...
Yannick Nesta Pessoa
yannickpessoa@yahoo.com
http://yahnyk.blogspot.com
And last week I spoke of Tate Street and it seemed to resonate with people too. And it seems coincidentally that as the fate would have it Tate Street has proven to be some kind of axis and focal point of energy and if I were one for serious astrological contemplation and in the world of spirits and omens then I would think it had a meaning. As it represents in my mind the golden age of Montego Bay, maybe because of its old world appearance and dimming glimmer of yesteryear charm or maybe its because my mother lived there and she had a million and one fond stories of playing cross from Jarret Park or going to park or when she went to Girl's School, is that Barracks or Corinaldi, I can never remember, then there was my old teacher Ms. Nelson who though teaching at Mt. Alvernia Prep, always said “When I was at Corinaldi yuh see...” then there was my old Aunt Ellis who lived at Tate Street and My mother's hair dresser Patsy lived around the corner, and I loved Satdays at Tate Street because my Grand Aunt Ellis had and eternal supply of soda, coincidentally my Aunt Ellis' son, my cousin-uncle died just recently, so a whole host of the Tate Street cast was at my door step in Paradise, I can't escape. And just when I thought the fates couldn't cross more at Tate Street, here comes my brand new co-worker a young Ms. Wiggan who happens to live on Tate Street and then there is the fact that now when your on Tate Street you have to look in the Mirror, literally and it seems I am compelled to do so figuratively and mentally as well. Seems Tate Streets is about Mirrors and reflections and reflecting. So it seems Tate Street, I remember you.
But I want to get back to the point about the golden age of Montego Bay, because I believe many of today's Montegonians don't remember a Mobay when it was a young city booming with potential and mellow balance of country and town, I think the youth of today have been saddled with the burden of carrying memories of a Mobay that is one big disorganized shanty town and urban nightmare, a failure in planning and myriad of haphazard malls and plazas chucked up on stilts and residence that are concreted to each other and roads riddled with potholes and a city infested with cocaine, crime, homosexuals, dialer, scammers, vain and trivial material pursuits and pursuants. How many will know Coral Wall and Gi-gi beach, how terrible it is to know that many will only know Aquasol and never remember again, Walter Fletcher. How many will forget the ampitheatre that gave way to highways, how many won't know that before civilization and rampant malignant urban sprawl, before the Central Business District (CBD) started its march out ward that Jarret, Tate, McCathy, Hart Street were prime real estate and proud residential communities, instead of rotting board houses and make shift garages and ad hoc concrete creations. How many have forgotten, how many will remember, I remember.
Memories are important people, they are the marks and the milestones and the landmarks in our lives, minds and history that make us who we are, that carry us to this inevitable point, it is what must be used to propel us into the future, but I fear if you cannot remember, ifyou do not remember, then you shall be lost, if you have left your future to be governed by someone else, if you don't know where you have been coming from, what is you liked and cherished, who it is you are, what you are, then you can never keep it, you can never maintain it and you can never restore it. You have name reference or frame work upon which to draw to map and chart your future, for if you trust it to outsiders, Europeans, Americans, gods, Barracks, or any other would be Messiahs then my friend, remember at least this, you are lost. But I remember.
And to all my friends, soldiers, comrades who are wondering why Yannick is M.I.A. don't worry, to all my friends I haven't seen in eons, to even the people who glimpse and barely touched or passed by in my life, to childhood friends from wonder years ago, like Ms. Tamora Decqarish ( I think I lost on the spelling there but), mans and mans from College weh mi nuh see inna years, Cherry, Lisa Thorpe, to Ms. T. Campbell, to even those who malice me, and who feel like dem a mi enemy, every single souljah... I and I remember YOU!
Ancient Memories come on into my soul...
Yannick Nesta Pessoa
yannickpessoa@yahoo.com
http://yahnyk.blogspot.com
I Will Remember You
I Will Remember You
“Ancient memories come on into my soul...”
~Sizzla Kalonji
“I've never tried to block out the memories of the past, even though some are painful. I don't understand people who hide from their past. Everything you live through helps to make you the person you are now.”
~Sophia Loren
“We all have our time machines. Some take us back, they're called memories. Some take us forward, they're called dreams.”
~Jeremy Irons
Good Evening gentle people one and all, wherever you roam, I wish you the best of Friday evenings or the “mellowest” of Saturday mornings, I assume thats when you will probably be perusing this edition of the Mirror, so I hope you have one of those unhectic Friday evenings, maybe you'll have gotten paid and can find your choice of great escapes, whether it be the bar or the sports lounge, the infamous and ubiquitous “ends” or the more notorious corners or just that particular shop you haunt or hold your palavers and congregations, or maybe its just your baby mother's place or on your verandah, I hope its one of those evening when the informal radio stations we call sound systems are broadcasting Barrington Levy and Jacob Miller and Beres, some “Black Roses” and some “Tired fi...” and some “Putting up resistance” and those other sounds that calm the savage beast and mellow the mind. Hmmm or maybe it's one of those early Saturday mornings when you catch the rooster and walk out to greet a gentle sun peeping on the eastern horizon, and get the opportunity to glimpse and injest the breaking of day the slow stirring of the world around you as it begins to wake, and your getting your tea and seeing about breaking your fast. Yeah one of those easy evenings or morns. Do you remember those? I know it's easy to get caught up in the pace of living and life, but do you remember those, easy at peace and at one with yourself morns or evenings, do you?
So why is it that I am on the issue of memory and remembering this week? Well, actually I don't remember. Joke! Ahm, well it is because I've been remembering a lot of things recently and also I find I tend to be very redolent or in remembering mood at this time of year. I guess in a way this time of year is the evening time of the year or the that end of the day point of the year, when the breadth of 12 months is almost over and that year end new year period is some what like those evenings and early mornings. Well what have I been remembering? Actually I've been thinking about the issue of memory itself, as well as remembering things. Things like Tate Street, Montego Bay the way it was, many Montegonian icons come and gone, people I haven't seen in years, the massive amount of people I knew that died this year (and oh they were many), and of course the endless line of fallen soldiers in the street, long lost loves, school days, Kingston days, days in Sav, days in foreign lands. When do you find those moments to remember? Is it those easy morns or evenings? And who or what do you remember and is it even worth remembering?
Now I want you to churn over this little summation or definition of memory I borrowed from The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: ‘Memory’ is a label for a diverse set of cognitive capacities by which humans and perhaps other animals retain information and reconstruct past experiences, usually for present purposes. Our particular abilities to conjure up long-gone episodes of our lives are both familiar and puzzling. We remember experiences and events which are not happening now, so memory seems to differ from perception. We remember events which really happened, so memory is unlike pure imagination. Memory seems to be a source of knowledge, or perhaps just is retained knowledge. Remembering is often suffused with emotion. It is an essential part of much reasoning. It is connected in obscure ways with dreaming. Some memories are shaped by language, others by imagery. Much of our moral life depends on the peculiar ways in which we are embedded in time. Memory goes wrong in mundane and minor, or in dramatic and disastrous ways.
Well it seems this article has begun to run away from the word limit and word count so, it seems it's going to have to be a FEW parter (I tell you I've spot a conspiracy to destroy the english language by genderizing and sexualizing every word, but I digress), and had wanted to talk more about the things I actually remembered like Tate Street and a lot of the people and faces and some more places, but till next week...
Yannick Nesta Pessoa
yahnyk.blogspot.com
yannickpessoa@yahoo.com
“Ancient memories come on into my soul...”
~Sizzla Kalonji
“I've never tried to block out the memories of the past, even though some are painful. I don't understand people who hide from their past. Everything you live through helps to make you the person you are now.”
~Sophia Loren
“We all have our time machines. Some take us back, they're called memories. Some take us forward, they're called dreams.”
~Jeremy Irons
Good Evening gentle people one and all, wherever you roam, I wish you the best of Friday evenings or the “mellowest” of Saturday mornings, I assume thats when you will probably be perusing this edition of the Mirror, so I hope you have one of those unhectic Friday evenings, maybe you'll have gotten paid and can find your choice of great escapes, whether it be the bar or the sports lounge, the infamous and ubiquitous “ends” or the more notorious corners or just that particular shop you haunt or hold your palavers and congregations, or maybe its just your baby mother's place or on your verandah, I hope its one of those evening when the informal radio stations we call sound systems are broadcasting Barrington Levy and Jacob Miller and Beres, some “Black Roses” and some “Tired fi...” and some “Putting up resistance” and those other sounds that calm the savage beast and mellow the mind. Hmmm or maybe it's one of those early Saturday mornings when you catch the rooster and walk out to greet a gentle sun peeping on the eastern horizon, and get the opportunity to glimpse and injest the breaking of day the slow stirring of the world around you as it begins to wake, and your getting your tea and seeing about breaking your fast. Yeah one of those easy evenings or morns. Do you remember those? I know it's easy to get caught up in the pace of living and life, but do you remember those, easy at peace and at one with yourself morns or evenings, do you?
So why is it that I am on the issue of memory and remembering this week? Well, actually I don't remember. Joke! Ahm, well it is because I've been remembering a lot of things recently and also I find I tend to be very redolent or in remembering mood at this time of year. I guess in a way this time of year is the evening time of the year or the that end of the day point of the year, when the breadth of 12 months is almost over and that year end new year period is some what like those evenings and early mornings. Well what have I been remembering? Actually I've been thinking about the issue of memory itself, as well as remembering things. Things like Tate Street, Montego Bay the way it was, many Montegonian icons come and gone, people I haven't seen in years, the massive amount of people I knew that died this year (and oh they were many), and of course the endless line of fallen soldiers in the street, long lost loves, school days, Kingston days, days in Sav, days in foreign lands. When do you find those moments to remember? Is it those easy morns or evenings? And who or what do you remember and is it even worth remembering?
Now I want you to churn over this little summation or definition of memory I borrowed from The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: ‘Memory’ is a label for a diverse set of cognitive capacities by which humans and perhaps other animals retain information and reconstruct past experiences, usually for present purposes. Our particular abilities to conjure up long-gone episodes of our lives are both familiar and puzzling. We remember experiences and events which are not happening now, so memory seems to differ from perception. We remember events which really happened, so memory is unlike pure imagination. Memory seems to be a source of knowledge, or perhaps just is retained knowledge. Remembering is often suffused with emotion. It is an essential part of much reasoning. It is connected in obscure ways with dreaming. Some memories are shaped by language, others by imagery. Much of our moral life depends on the peculiar ways in which we are embedded in time. Memory goes wrong in mundane and minor, or in dramatic and disastrous ways.
Well it seems this article has begun to run away from the word limit and word count so, it seems it's going to have to be a FEW parter (I tell you I've spot a conspiracy to destroy the english language by genderizing and sexualizing every word, but I digress), and had wanted to talk more about the things I actually remembered like Tate Street and a lot of the people and faces and some more places, but till next week...
Yannick Nesta Pessoa
yahnyk.blogspot.com
yannickpessoa@yahoo.com
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)