The Memories That Get Stuck in Your Brain
Mark Slutsky wrote a piece about what he called amygalar earworms: “the memory equivalent of a melodic hook—amygdalar earworms.” So they’re the memories that bubble up to the surface in response to a trigger. For example, I spent thousands of hours on or around Lake Mendota in Madison, Wisconsin. But if you talk about Lake Mendota, I immediately think of one of two memories:
1. Picking up a rock near the edge of the frozen lake and throwing it against the surface to test if it would still support our weight or if the lake was beginning to thaw, and watching the rock smash through the surface.
Or
2. Somewhere between midnight and two in the morning, my friend and I had the brilliant idea to walk to Picnic Point in the dark with flashlights. When we got to the stone wall, a man walked past us, without a flashlight, totally silent and just glancing our way as if walking in the dark in the middle of the night without a flashlight in a muddy nature preserve (it was the summer of The Bog) was non-comment-worthy.
And then I will keep thinking about either one of these two memories — or both — the rest of the day. It happens whenever someone mentions the lake.
If you pushed me to come up with other lake memories, I could. I remember the day I climbed into the lake fully dressed or watching kids feed Starbursts to the swan or running around on the frozen lake with Marts and making snow angels. But they don’t get stuck in my head for the rest of the day, or bubble up readily any time someone brings up the lake.
What are your amygdalar earworms?
2 comments
I like to tell the kid that I don’t really have any stories to tell because my memory doesn’t work like that. But when my sisters were here and we were all reminiscing, the kid said “I can’t believe you say you don’t have any stories!” So, I don’t have any amygdalar memories as described – I need a trigger to remember anything. And what pops up from a trigger is random.
OK, now I’m wondering about that man walking alone without a torch in the middle of the night.
I’m not sure of any memories that stay with me for the rest of the day, other than things that haunt me – when I’ve hurt someone, for eg, or was accused unfairly of something. Though since I first read this yesterday, I’ve been remembering sitting on the banks of the Dordogne river at La Roque Gageac, and how beautiful it was. I’m not sure if that counts – it may be in my head because my husband and I had talked about it recently.