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November: It’s that wonderful time of year again when my birthday reminds me of the passage of time and the inevitable progress of ageing, decrepitude, and decay. Having initially believed that the shock of turning 30 would be the worst of it, I now brace for the unenviable proposition of turning 31, which is like 30 except a year older and with still no resolution to the crisis of ageing in sight. (more…)
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How does memory work? What enables us to conjure up experiences, facts, and events from our past? St. Augustine wrote that our experience becomes memory by “going to a place which is yet not a place,” pre-empting Freud’s work on memory.
Incidentally, if you are ever racking your brains to try to remember some event, person, or fact, take this tip I learned from Freud (although, ironically, I can’t remember where): Don’t try to remember, don’t thrash your memory. Simply get on with something else and, in a minute or two, the memory will arrive. It works for me every time. (more…)
Curt Stoeving, Friedrich Nietzsche, 1894.
Curt Stoeving, Friedrich Nietzsche, 1894.
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The French philosopher René Descartes was a worried man. His concern was that his memory resembled a sheet of paper that was constantly being written over with his experiences, with facts and events. Realizing that it is in the nature of paper eventually to become filled with writing, he avoided wherever possible being told extraneous facts for fear that insufficient room would remain in his mind for things of importance to this polymath. Thus, he hoped to avoid the fate of Homer. Homer Simpson, that is. (more…)
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I’ve been reviewing Trump movies, and now it’s après moi, le deluge time. I saw The Father a couple of weeks ago in a typically empty theater, and was moved by its study of dementia and bravura acting by an excellent cast. Directed by Florian Zeller and based on his play, The Father tells the story of Anthony (Anthony Hopkins), an elderly man who lives alone in his shadowy apartment. (more…)