Everything, everywhere; there, there:
After a certain age our memories are so interwoven with each other that the object of our thoughts or the book which we are reading has practically no importance. We have left traces of ourselves everywhere, everything is fertile, everything is dangerous, and we can make discoveries every bit as precious in an advertisement for soap as in Pascal's Pensées.
Marcel Proust, The Fugitive, translated by Peter Collier (London: Penguin, 2003), 508
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I rode home through the city streets. There wasn't a street — there wasn't a building — that wasn't connected to some memory in my mind. There, I was buying a suit with my father. There, I was having an ice cream soda after school.
Wallace Shawn and André Gregory, screenplay for My Dinner with André (1981) (words spoken by Shawn)
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comments: 3
Wow. So true.
Nice connections, yes. My Dinner is a long-time fave of mine. I especially like the idea of a city--a country actually--totally built by the "prisoners" within it, who don't even realize they're in prison, and indeed argue vehemently that it's a wonderful place.
Aunt Dan and Lemon is brave stuff too.
Yes, that bit resonates in all kinds of ways in our consumer culture.
If you have a copy of My Dinner with André, Willie, guard it! It seems to be out of print. Copies on Amazon start at $29 (videotape) and $94 (DVD). Maybe someday there'll be a great Criterion Collection edition.
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