On memory and imagination

My story, Silver Bangles, is published today by Amarillo Bay. I wrote the first draft a few years ago, on return from a holiday in Madagascar, and, reading through the proofs last month, I couldn't stop myself from also checking my version of events in the story against the actual experience. 

Before I lose myself, and you, in a reverie of dancing lemurs, spiky botanics, beautiful beaches  and a fascinating culture of ancestor worship – this is not supposed to be a
what-I-done-on-my-holidays kind of blog – do take a moment to listen to the music …

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… a haunting melody that had me in tears when I first heard it beautifully performed by these young people from a village in the middle of nowhere  (although the link takes you to a professional recording with a delightful picture of zebu that I doubt had much to do with producing it).

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Anyway, it had me thinking, as is my wont, about how the boundary between memory and imagination is a lot more fuzzy than we might like it to be and, remembering something as having happened, is insufficient evidence that it actually did. I wonder how much writing stories about events close to our lived experience, about things that might have happened, but didn't, changes our memories and constructions of our own pasts and who we are.

It seems that fiction has the potential to change other people's memories, as well as that of the author. Another story of mine, Kinky Norm, started out as a writing exercise with the prompt: I remember, so it was clearly going to be autobiographical in nature. Nevertheless, like any writer, I was open to embellishment for the good of the narrative. There came a point in the story where I had the opportunity to embarrass one of the characters, so naturally I took it, even though I had to invent something to do so. The story featured a bunch of teenage girls and when one of my old school friends read it, she remembered it as I'd written it, more or less, including the bit I'd made up.

Oh the power of the author! Unless there's some other explanation?

If I'd forgotten part of what happened (although it wasn't my embarrassment in this particular case, so I'd have no motivation to repress it) and my unconscious mind recovered it in the process of writing the story, that could make my fiction more true to life than my memory. While I'm a strong believer in the power of the unconscious, that seems too convoluted even for me.

So back to my other story. When I started this post, I was pretty sure the story was true to my emotional experience of aspects of that holiday, but there'd never been any girls selling bangles. Until scanning through photographs to accompany my blog, I came across this. And at the back of a drawer, in the bedroom, I remember now, there's a lone silver bangle from Madagascar.

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