How does memory work? (Another excerpt from my 1st draft)

This is a bit of a strange one but I thought I’d share it anyway. To (very) briefly explain –  at the heart of my story are questions about memory, and how our memories of life experiences affect who we are and how we behave. With that in mind…

 

It’s believed that our long-term memory comes in three flavours:
Episodic, Procedural and Semantic.

Your first kiss,
The best meal you’ve ever eaten,
Attending your daughter’s graduation,
Episodic memory covers the massive accumulation,
Of life experiences that are unique to you,
Things that have happened at a specific time,
At a specific venue.

Procedural memory comprises those skills,
That have been learnt,
But that we perform so effortlessly that it appears we weren’t,
Conscious of learning them in the first place,
Like riding a bike or tying a shoe lace.

And semantic memory is all about remembering factual information,
Such as capital cities or multiplication,
Often the sort of stuff you learn at school,
Right down to the most basic cognition:
That a cat is an animal and a hammer is a tool.

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Readers’ Recommendations; “Primer”

Fogs kindly asked me to write about a movie he should see… so I did…

Fogs' Movie Reviews

Hey everyone, it’s Friday, time for another entry in the Reader Recommendations series!

The Reader Recommendation series is intended to help me formally pursue all the great films that commenters bring up each week in discussion which I’ve never seen. If there’s a movie that comes up that I haven’t seen, but you think I should, email me @ fogsmoviereviews@gmail.com or let me know in the comments that you’d like to participate!

This time up, our recommendation comes from Mark Nelkin of Beautiful Orange. Mark has recommended Shane Carruth’s “Primer”, a film that has gotten no small amount of buzz in the blogosphere, and one I’ve been waiting to check out for a while!

Click through to see what we had to say!

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Stuff that inspires me: #4 Beasts of the Southern Wild

At the start of this week I went for a job interview. The final question put to me wasn’t exactly what I was expecting: what was the best film I’d seen in the last year? I didn’t pause; I didn’t have to think; it was an easy choice. Beasts of the Southern Wild is actually the best film I’ve seen in a few years.

Miraculous and magical are the words that most readily come to mind. I’m guilty of over-using the phrase ‘like poetry on the screen’ for movies that I love but, in this case, I think it’s absolutely justified.

The setting is the fictional community of The Bathtub, which is clearly a hall-of-mirrors reflection of the population that lived on the edge of New Orleans during the floods. It’s a bleak, derelict, backwards corner of society and is home to the tough-as-nails Hushpuppy, who survives in a mystical world that exists largely in her own head, and her dad, Wink. As they struggle to survive, we become as intimate with nature and as confused about the boundaries between reality and fantasy as Hushpuppy – but the film is never anything but brilliant and beautiful. And despite having a dream-like quality, it feels grounded and authentic thanks to it’s stunning novice cast.

Everything comes together here. The soundtrack (by Dan Romer and director, Benh Zeitlin) reflects and drives the film. Whenever I now listen to it, wherever I am, I’m transported to a different place… back to Hushpuppy’s world.

This film is touched by genius and I’d urge everyone to see it.

(Go on, click above for the trailer)

Responsibility

One morning,
The sun forgot to get out of bed.
His alarm didn’t wake him,
And the moon didn’t call by on her way home.
So it was dark,
For a very long time,
Indeed.

But then the sun,
Became lazy.
His bed was so comfortable,
And it did him no harm,
To rest for a while.
And so it was dark,
For longer,
Indeed.

Come on,
Said the moon,
I know we all forget things as we get older,
But the Earth is getting so much colder.

Enough,
Said the people.
We like the moon,
We really do,
But without your warm glow,
We’re feeling kinda blue.

Yawn,
Said the sun.
All I can hear is your damned whining,
But my pillow’s plumped,
The sheets are soft,
And this star ain’t for shining.

But the moon,
Was now working over-time.
To be honest,
She was pretty annoyed,
That the sun didn’t come.
So the moon quit too.
And it was dark,
Forever,
Indeed.

You know when a song gets stuck in your head…?

19th May     Losing My Religion

21st May     Hello

22nd May     Son of a Preacher man

23rd May     They Built This City on Rock ‘n Roll

25th May     A Little Less Conversation

27th May     Hit The Road Jack

28th May     A Hard Day’s Night

30th May     Cats in the Cradle

31st May     Just Can’t Get Enough

4th June     I Wanna Dance With Somebody