Pickleman presents

Memory’s Great Vertigo: David Hartt and Leah Ke Yi Zheng

Where is memory,
and what is it, ex-act-ly?
A method of bindery?
The thing which makes us WE?
Communal stories;
tales to which we all agree?
Nature’s mystery 
explained as conjec-ture-ies?
Or oft re-told myth-o-lo-gy
of life’s personal toils,
collected as if debris,
to be sorted and recycled
into experience’s facsimile,
through which we will
sanely think we’re learn’ed,
through which we will
vainly think we’re ME

But YOUs not US,
and THEYs not ME,
despite our universal wish
or fan-ta-sy
To our grave memory we take
after life’s impulse,
its vi-tal-i-ty and chemical e-lec-tric-i-ty,
finally stops,
finally ceases TO BE

And Proust he thought
(and wrote to prove)
that remembrance breeds
its own uni-ver-sal-i-ty
An though that I consume his lines
(and suggest that you do too)
where now is poor Marcel’s
life-ly memory
but food for plants in Père Lachaise?
And should I consume the ground
around the space at which he rests:
will I imbibe the beautiful memory
of a lovely musical phrase?
Or a biscuits moistened aroma?
(catch my drift?)
Or the fetid exchange
of intercourse or kiss?
I think this sentiment ill-u-sory,
as remembrance received second-hand
be it joy or misery,
can ere but help to be
the shadow of ne-ces-si-ty
from which
the most of live is live’ed
and processed into
memory then give’ed

Alas, though it may be so
that with my death
all memory shall go,
chimerical, or passed along
or not—
Know not, I shall, if re-told

Bravissimo for the imbroglio
as such
is Memory’s great vertigo