Fake Memories in My Ghost

There's this awesome 1995 sci-fi film called Ghost in the Shell. It is set in a nowadays not so distant future where the vast majority of people, even the not so affluent ones, can afford all manner of cybernetic implants. This means that people are mostly normal, at least outwardly, but they are also living computers of sorts. This has a lot of advantages but also leaves them vulnerable in other ways... Of note there's a reallttty striking scene in which a garbage collector is manipulated by a powerful hacker into performing a series of tasks along his work route, all in a ploy to gain some leverage in the divorce and child custody proceedings he's currently undergoing with his now ex-wife. Long story short, the police are onto this in a sting operation, in a stellar scene that is much more complicated than what I'm now describing, and at the end of it the garbage collector is caught and found to have his brain hacked. There is no ex-wife, there is no daughter, they don't exist and never have. It was all a fake memory implanted into him... As the film moves on the man's future is left uncertain, with him now having the knowledge that a significant portion of his memories never actually happened, but everything inside him still tells him that they did, after a process that is seemingly irreversible. Obviously this is a potential weakness created by the cybernetic advancements, but could a normal man experience something similar with the simple passing of time?

Now, though I really love this movie I won't pretend to understand it, and I'm sure there's someone out there who understands its AI and technology themes way better than me and has said lots of cool things about them. So this won't be an essay on that film. This will be more random, I guess.

But yeah, I do love that scene very much, as I'm sure most people do, and I instantly went to it when I thought about the concept of fake memories. At least as time goes on I seem to find myself acquiring memories that half of me realizes are fake, but the other half accepts as real. I'm not sure I can quite make sense of it, though I'll try as I go on, but I have noticed I can't be the only one to have such memories, or such misapprehensions, that over time form fake memories, because the first time I noticed this was when people who've known me for a long time decided to reminisce about the day we met, and they sometimes would go on to describe an otherwise accurate picture of me, glasses and all... except I didn't wear glasses at the time... Still, people would become adamant about it, even if their logic was lacking they would still act as though they had the right of it. And since it's not much of a combative statement either way I didn't have a rush to correct them. I'd just leave them be, but can I leave myself be when I catch my own brain remembering false memories?

The funny thing with memory is that it's rather personal and intimate, so to describe any particular memory, especially to strangers but even to close friends, creates a bit of a paradox... Do I describe it in great detail, painting a vivid picture but risking making it boring or awkward to anyone who doesn't relate to it? Or do I describe it briefly, giving it a more universal appeal but risking making it seem casual and unimportant? I'm of the opinion that it takes a nutty frenchman to do this right, but I can try my hand at it too. And so do I have examples of fake memories? I think I do, though to varying degrees of quality or perhaps relevance. Here's a weird one... When I was in ninth grade me and my schoolmates used to play lots of games on friday morning IT class, among which was of course the classic Counter-Strike. Then when I was in tenth grade I used to play a game called Metin. Entirely different school, almost entirely different friends, and an all new stage in my life, and yet the fake memory is that over time I seem to have acquired vivid memories of playing Metin with my ninth grade mates on those very same friday mornings, even though at that time I for sure didn't even know the game existed... I'm guessing the reason for this confusion is that when we access a specific memory we do so along an accurate timeline, like pulling documents from a folder, but as the years go on the memories that happened closer together end up merging a bit, especially since we are accessing them in roughly the same area. In that sense those similar situations, as it pertains to school and friends and games in my particular example, end up merging one memory with another, so much so that this general feeling of vividness, if the expression even makes any sense, gradually overtakes historical accuracy. And so now I have a feeling of having experienced something I know didn't happen, at least not quite in that way.

I have another example, somewhat more recent... When I was in high school I went on a two-day school trip, including with the tenth grade friend who introduced me to Metin by the way. The first day was to a place called Évora, an important city in the literature of a fella goes by the name of Vergílio Ferreira. It was a nice trip, the kind that in the moment I didn't care that much about, even found it a little boring, except on the bus ride back home during which I began to love the music of Led Zeppelin... But as the years went by this trip created a lot of nostalgia, in me and in my friends as we often bring it up over a cup of coffee, even to this day. Thing is, a year or two ago I read the briefly aforementioned In Search of Lost Time and this has kinda given me a bit of a mix-up because I now seem to have very vivid memories of being in high school and reading the first volume of that book during that selfsame trip... Again it can't possibly be true, I most definitely didn't even know about Marcel Proust's existence at that time, but for some reason, sitting at home reading that book and occasionally looking out the window in between pages has caused me to reminisce and eventually mistake one for the other. Factually I know this to be wrong but I guess when those proustian moments of nostalgia come to me do I care? I guess I don't, I guess I let myself get carried away with it... To be sure it is at least partly due to the fact that there are similarities between the books, Proust's and Ferreira's, because some scenes cause me to imagine a city, and so I'd go on to picture Évora even while reading about Combray, and eventually I'd reach a point where what I'd remember becomes what I imagined, and what I'd imagine becomes what I remembered.

I can think of two other kinds of fake memories – ones where we neglect or reduce some of the bad things, and ones where we exaggerate or invent some of the good things. On the first point I'm reminded right away of my college days, but not so much in an event kind of way, more so in a detail kind of way. At any rate, I mostly think of memory like that. It's not so much a story we tell, it's more a series of sensations... I remember waiting for the metro, whether it be on a rainy or sunny day, I remember sitting on my usual park bench to read or to relax for a moment with the sun on my face, I remember walking across the city and thinking all the while, some thoughts deep, others silly. I can easily remember all that stuff and more, that I omit because brevity is the soul of bad memory, but I don't as easily remember the occasional feelings of nausea or the hunger headaches as I took the metro, I don't remember the sun shining a bit too bright over the pages of my book as I sat on that park bench, I don't remember getting tired from walking around, especially when in a rush... It's quite as if our system cleans the memories up a bit, editing them like you would in a movie, removing all the unnecessary details, all the proverbial trips to the bathroom, so to speak. I can still remember them rationally, I suppose, but they're not bound to appear on any golden age montages.

On the second point I might say that the exaggerations are in many ways the mirror image of the neglected memories. Sunny days have fewer clouds still, rainy days have warmer winds, awkward silences become charming and brief, and laughs and smiles become frame-perfect, again, like a movie, or maybe worse, like some of that generic stock footage that marketing departments use all over... Our memory cuts out the fat and leaves only the best moments, even to the point where it don't matter much what happened per se, more so what we want to highlight. And in line with that, with this tendency to forget the rough edges, to lose the forest for one especially beautiful tree, and perhaps a bit more crazy of me specifically, as time goes on I so often lose myself imagining what could have been. On that one specific moment when that person said this I'm reminded of how I should have said that, and it would have been really funny... This sort of thing comes up a lot, and though I could get into details I don't think I will, but suffice it to say it does happen, and keeps on happening, to the point where episodes of my imagination, that I have replayed in my head so many times, become so realistic and believable that when I realize they could well have happened I begin to act as though they kinda did. Still, not rationally, I haven't lost my mind, not yet at least. But in my more quiet and lonesome moments, the moments when imagination paints such a beautiful portrait of a past I wish I had, I confess I do let myself remember fantasies as though they did happen.

A possible source for this could be memory association. It's a weird thing I do and though it's weird I can't possibly be the only one who does it... Basically I have a specific memory that came about naturally, whether it be something I did with friends, family, or even on me own. And as time goes on I am occasionally reminded of it along with all its details. And then as a similar situation approaches in the calendar I sometimes go out of my way to recreate that first memory. For example, and this time I will try to go into some detail, I recall one new year's eve in which I watched The Wolf of Wall Street for the first time while drinking peach ice tea and eating some salted peanuts. It was actually a rather sad time for me, and that one night was the first time in a long while in which I simply forgot my cares... Anyway, in the following year I did the exact same thing, and the year after that too. Then I stopped either because it didn't occur to me, or maybe I didn't feel like it, or maybe because I lost heart when I learned that this particular brand of ice tea had been discontinued, presumably because it drove people a little nostalgically mad... I've done something similar with multiple things and events, mostly food and drink as they are quite appealing to the senses of memory, but also music, such as listening to specific songs when walking along specific streets, and also occasionally scents, such as perfumes or air fresheners when, for whatever reason, I am reminded of specific ones and so I search them throughout the supermarket. All the while I'm struggling to explain this without sounding crazy but it's just that when things add up, and when that nostalgia tightens, it instantly becomes appealing to recapture that very first feeling, to once again experience that long lost memory as if once again, and forever, and for the first time, and for the last... And if this don't make sense it's because I've given up trying.

Then again not only is this crazy it is also potentially bad... Nostalgia is a constant chase, as I've said so myself, and so you can never quite catch her, even though she so often teases you to chase her. When those moments come up, and when the future is uncertain, it is always tempting to return to the past, to make any given sad day oh so similar to a happy day one, two, three or ten years ago, almost as if you'd be momentarily stopping time so that you can finally breathe for a bit. Tomorrow you'll carry on, I suppose, but for now you just want some peace and quiet... In a way I guess I also want to imagine that if I recreate a day long gone I can imagine that this very real tomorrow is gonna be similar to the tomorrow from long ago, and thus since I know how it goes I can take it real easy... Even the harsh days of the past are better than the uncertain days of the future, a devil-you-know kind of thing, and since we seem hard-wired to neglect the ghosts of the past then it's all the better. I guess at the end of the day, when you don't have much to hope for or much to do, you just kinda default into what you've always had. And the more time goes on and the more repeated some memories become, then the more you're tempted to change them or add to them, until a seemingly new one is formed, and thus is born a memory that never happened.

That is at least somewhat pressing because this memory association thing does create strange fake memories in my ghost... To give another specific example, having adopted The Exorcist as one of my favorite movies of all time after watching it in early september, I have also since acquired an urge to rewatch it every september, but not just that, to do so specifically on a september afternoon, on a relatively cold but sunny day, while I'm home alone. The thing is that if I do that on two separate years, as I have, I then find myself almost losing track of things. Not permanently, and it's not complete and utter confusion, but on first remembering it is often the case that one sensation in my memory crosses path with another. If the first time I watched the movie I was taking a french class, then I just put two and two together, but if the second time around I was taking an italian class instead, then when I go to do the math I'm unsure which of the twos I'm supposed to add up... When I watched it that one specific time when I did that one specific thing afterwards, which year was it again?... And so I need to pull up other memory bits to paint a full picture, to get the puzzle to reveal a known trail of my own remembering. I suppose if I keep repeating that same experience every year, as close to the original as I possibly can, then a day might come when they are all so jumbled up that I lose track, and perhaps worse still, a day might come when ten years have gone by and I have acquired no new memories... Then again it don't quite work that way because no matter how closely I try, this memory association ritual never creates two exact moments. No two days are alike, they only seem that way when seen from afar, from a scope far too impersonal to be valuable to our perception.

And this might could lead me to my final point, which would be the potential dark side of all nostalgia... If fake memories aren't enough, because I think in some cases they aren't that bad and are somewhat inevitable, as evidenced by the glasses detail, then I'd say that being lost in time sure counts for something. Why then are we, or at least am I, so damn nostalgic? I've alluded to it before, when I say that the past is always more green pastures and still waters, altogether lovely, it's a time that comes to us as a place, and allows us to take a moment to visit a better episode of our lives, perhaps even with the aforementioned freedom to relive only the best details of the best moments. The problem though is that, like with the memory association, at a certain point constantly living in the past drowns your future. The people who most obsess for the good old days tend to be ones without much going on, without anything new to tell, so that when they do try to move on they find themselves stuck, and when they try to chat to old friends they find themselves unable to relate in any meaningful way. I should know... I suppose it's easy to assume that the past is as important to me as it is to anyone I've ever shared it with, but people tend to have such short memories, especially if they have full lives... I suppose then I'm not blind to the fact that I fill my present days with ghosts of my past, but then again I can't stop feeling how it's such a nice thing that I might as well.

I understand this whole thing is strange and disorientating, more than my usual even. And I am presently writing this with some hunger and quite a lot of drowsiness. Might sleep hungry tonight, though there was a time in my life, a much better time, when falling asleep hungry was impossible to me. But anyway, what am I even saying? I guess it's just that memory is this strange thing, and the safety of our past is often such a blessing that to remember it fondly has its own name, even all over the world and all throughout time. So I can't be alone on this, it's strange but not that strange, and even if some of it is slightly inaccurate I think I'm gonna go ahead and assume it's all mine. And even what is totally made up, until the day comes when I can build something real, it's all gonna be my soul and treasure. And if that day never comes, if nostalgia for memories both real and fake is all I'll ever have, then I guess I might as well cherish it all the same for being better than nothing.