Comparison:
Our minds render the past in surrealist montages, not as cinéma verité; we are more Willem de Kooning than Dorothea Lange.
Washington Post writer Bina Venkataraman reviewed neuroscientist and clinical psychologist Charan Ranganath's book Why We Remember: Unlocking Memory’s Power to Hold on to What Matters. One of the many insights offered about Venkataraman's understanding of memory involved how non-direct and non-literal most of our memories can be. Hence the reference to de Kooning and Lange. What happens if you aren't familiar with either de Kooning OR Lange. Does the context below offer you enough to imagine how memories appear or function most of the time? Time to get out your culture, art, and history notes perhaps.
Context:
'To forget is to be human,' Ranganath asserts. His book largely seeks to reassure the reader, with lucid and rigorous explanations of the relevant neuroscience, that much of our everyday forgetting is just fine. The problems we have with memory — and we have many — arise, instead, from our expectation that it will be accurate and photographic instead of creative and impressionistic. Our minds render the past in surrealist montages, not as cinéma verité; we are more Willem de Kooning than Dorothea Lange.
Citation:
Venkataraman, Bina. Rev. of “Why We Remember: Unlocking Memory’s Power to Hold on to What Matters.“ “Why You’re Always Forgetting Things.“ Washington Post, 23 Feb. 2024. Web.
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