While the Music Lasts
There is a man without memory, and a woman who loves him.
Somewhere, a line got broken. In his mind, the pause before the drop: everything is suspended. He cannot remember his name. He cannot remember five minutes ago, or five hours, or five days. But he remembers that he loves her.
When the storm arrived, everything was thrown overboard. The lines tense and strain, and the boards shout in protest. Take your tables and chairs, and throw them to the sky; a scattering of pots and pans, your treasure and your broken things. In the fight to stay afloat, the mind discards everything. Everything, but that which cannot be discarded.
Afterwards, he could remember two things (his flotsam and jetsam, his floatation device). How to play music, and how to love her.
*****
We walked forever, barefoot over the sand. The tide was out, and the mist lay heavy. Daniel thought the sky was an envelope: low, and sliding downwards into a fold. Everything was soft. We walked in a dream.
In the distance, three figures: black against Howth Head. In the sea of white, thick around us, they moved by rotoscope: a flicker of movement. Their voices were folded, too (like the sky, like the ground, like everything has been for the past two years). We walked, until we met the water.
Slide into the wet, and throw everything overboard. Breathe. Stay afloat. Discard everything, but that which cannot be discarded.
Some things can never be left behind. A shoulder in the light, and running to meet the stars. Abie, angry down the phone; Abie, smiling. Blood on a guitar, and spiders in the night. Tearing pieces of silver, and learning how to sing. My floatation devices, for when I forget.
My memories are who I am.
*****
I remember this beach, several years ago. There is a photograph somewhere, I know. I am wearing a long white skirt, and learning to juggle; my hair is long, too, the longest it had been. Same beach, same now.
How much of it do I actually remember? In my mind, there are pieces. A kite; Lindsay, by the van, and the smell muffled charcoal. Sand, and the taste of salt.
I am staring at myself from a distance. White skirt, black hair, leaning back: a perfect composite, a perfect shot.
I remember it exactly as it is in the photograph.
*****
I nearly lost all of my data this week. My laptop has been giving way, part by part: first the battery, then the logic board. Now, the hard drive is wide-eyed and confused. It tries to access a file, and freezes. A corruption: it is partly there, and partly not.
The thought terrifies me.
I store myself in bytes and grainy pixels. My memories flow into the photographs, and back out towards me: Maebh, playing with a balloon, Ruth squinting at the sunset. I cannot distinguish between my memories, and my photographs of my memories. They have become the same thing.
*****
I think of the man, lost in the present. What happens, when he sees himself in a photograph? Does something stir? (something deep, far beneath the waves, long discarded).
Can he recognise himself? What happens to the memory, when only the photograph remains?
*****
At Abie’s birthday party, Daniel played again. It was almost too much to bear.
I miss him.
And yet: the sweetness of it. My mouth was filled with it, and my chest. I had forgotten how his face looks when he sings.
When everything else is gone, and everything is passed, I remember that much. I remember the music, and I remember how to love.
*****
Later, walking back, I am last to leave the water. I have no camera. I have only myself: bare skin, and a million grains of life.
The water is rippled glass. I have to remember this. I will not remember this.
Closer to the car, Daniel is waiting. I point below us: look! There is a greeny-yellow twist on the sand. The ancient Greek had a word for it, he said. Neither yellow nor green, but some combination of the two: something that was not colour, not really, but that, that alone. The look of a bright, alive thing.
I love him for that.
It does not matter if I remember. It does not matter if I forget. There was a now, and I was in it (a bright, alive thing: lost and greeny-yellow).
I am alive, while the music lasts.
