PEN America

penlive:

The following post was written by PEN World Voices correspondent Sean Kevin Campbell.

“We’re in a bar; it’s late at night; let’s talk about Hegel! Let’s talk about Hegel’s Phenomenology! I’ve brought my copy along.” That was Simon Critchley Tuesday night, on stage at The Standard, eagerly flipping through the pages of his gradually disintegrating book: “This is what an obsessional book look like. It falls apart, and I reshuffle pages, apparently.”

We drank tequila compliments of Ilegal Mezcal, we explored the limits of memory, both human and artificial, and yes, we listened to the ideas of 18^th century German philosophers in the first of World Voices’ Obsession series. Seriously, if you can think of a better way to spend a Tuesday, I don’t want to be your friend.

Also, there was a three-foot statue of Mickey Mouse with a two-foot penis. I didn’t measure the girth, but my guess is that it was about a foot in circumference.

The focus of Critchley’s obsession was memory and memory theaters. Just so we’re all on the same page, memory theaters, in simplest terms, are both real and imagined structures used to store memories and knowledge, primarily through mnemonic techniques.

Where did this obsession come from? I’m glad you asked.

When Critchley was 18, he got his hand almost completely severed by the metal paddles of a mixing machine in a pharmaceutical factory. After he pulled his hand free, there was shattered bone and severed tendons. The experience was so traumatic that Critchley lost all of his memories from that point back. Thinking about the missing memories from that lost time, even when they come in quick flashes, he said, “The memories feel like they belong to someone else.”

If I had been wiped clean at the age of 18, I’d probably be obsessed with memories, too.

We covered some cool ideas that night, under The Standard’s purple lights and slowly rotating disco ball. Like, some philosophers thought that you could possess absolute knowledge if you had perfect memory, or the concept of the internet acting as a global memory theater that gradually makes our memory worse with its immediate access to knowledge.

The discussion made the concept of memory feel tangible, and the booze helped push them back into the ethereal. It was a good night.