Mnemosyne | How Our Memory Influences The Way We Create

We create because we remember. We create because we forget. Would humans be what we are without this unique characteristic of ours? 

The idea came to me from a podcast featuring Stephen Fry, one of my favourite writers, thinkers and orators, talking about Greek mythology. His quote goes, The Arts are the daughters of Memory. In literal context, it means that Muses, the Patrons of Arts, are the daughters of the goddess Mnemosyne (the goddess of memory) and Zeus. But it makes sense even if we look at the statement from different directions. It can make us look freshly at what memory is and how it affects our creation.

I had conversations about this topic long before – how remembering makes us suffer but consequently makes us creative. And also, how lucky we are that we can forget – pain and beauty. If we would remember the pain, we would be paralyzed with fear of ever trying anything risky. If we could remember love and beauty, if the awe of it remained alive in us, we wouldn’t desire and seek it so persistently and repeatedly. There would be no need for art, beauty, music.

"Our memory “is never a precise duplicate of the original [but] a continuing act of creation”. And how flawed our perception of time is — almost everything that occurred a year ago appears as having taken place either significantly further in the past (“a different lifetime,” I’d often marvel at this time-illusion) or significantly more recently (“this feels like just last month!”)." - Maria Popova

For me, the questions I ask at this point would be two. Are you creating from the need to reflect, remember, preserve? Or is your creation a consequence of the urge to explore possibilities, future, to look beyond what is known to you in the present?

In both cases, I think creating is venturing into the unknown. Time, after all, is relative, and so is our memory. We remember only fragments of reality, and as we remember, we are already creating a new reality. When recalling events, stories, feelings, no memory is hundred per cent accurate, we unconsciously bend the past, so that it aligns with our present reality.

This knowledge can help us be more open and accepting of the diverse views we have on past (or future) events. But it can also inspire us to tell stories from different angles. Our mind is creating constantly, without us even knowing it. So it’s no wonder, that we humans have this need for making new things, expressing ourselves and constantly rediscovering our truest expression.

Even with a memory us ours, which seems like our superpower, we always remain a mystery, even to ourselves.

Forgetting – a forgotten, but essential side of the memory

What about forgetting? It’s an even more fascinating, and truly essential part of our memory. Without forgetting, there would be no wonder, one of the magical qualities (and sometimes a curse) of human beings. Without wonder, there can be no true creation, there can be no love. Wonder makes us ask an endless chain of questions, makes us stop, listen and learn, and eventually try to replicate what this wonder has awoken in us.

For me, even if I’m mostly interpreting other people’s creations, the emotions and experiences I bring into the process, come from two places. Remembering and hoping. Sometimes recreating. I write, make music, take photographs, all from the painful awareness, that every moment is fleeting, it can't be repeated and the only way to stop it, is trying to recreate it. The feeling of eternity that some moments evoke; laughing with soulmates, enjoying the richness of solitude on a long walk, I’m always coming back to this. The sorrow that lies in brokenness. The light that follows it. Hoping, because luckily I forget. I, as a human, have the capability of forgetting betrayal, disappointment, physical pain of taking a risk. And that’s why I’m capable of hoping, for a better tomorrow, for the next magical moment, filled with light. A moment that stops time and makes me feel whole instead of broken.

Music-making as a tool for better memory

There is another side to this coin. We not only have the ability to memorise, but we can train our memory and make it better. The research has made it obvious that learning music is a way to develop both sides of our brain. By learning to play an instrument, our whole brain develops better. You can watch this video for a clearer explanation of this phenomenon. As Dr Robert Zatorre shows us in his TED talk, playing music has an enormous value for how it makes our brains work.

Even if it may seem, and we increasingly treat music solely as entertainment, the actual research shows us that music is much more than that. It is a survival necessity and maybe even more importantly, a crucial tool for the better development of human beings. Why don't we use it better?