The Myth of Memory — Cel Davison

Screenshot of No Longer Home: In a half packed bedroom Ao sits on the bed and Bo sits on top of the wardrobe

Digging through old photos, the flat is much messier than I remember, and much more so than our dioramic recreation would have you believe. I have select memories of that place I spent my last year of university living in. It’s hard to recall exactly how I felt/lived and how much I’ve romanticised. I remember a lot of joy, but when I reach a little further I can place many pieces of pain: your undiagnosed bipolar and my undiagnosed ADHD; it was a steep hill and the boulder would continuously roll back down it.

Black and white polaroid of Hana Lee sitting in a messy bedroom, in 2015

Stand out moments we chose to document in this journal of ours: barbecues, staying up all night playing video games with friends, or talking in bed. We selected these memories, curated them; other parts we omitted. Over time they became solidified as cannon in our own memories. Omitted days and trials slowly oozed out of brains, seeping, until we had our story formed for presentation. Our past marketed; sealed in plastic shrink wrap, ready for consumption. We sell our memories like wares, like bottled trinkets.

Video games take a long time to create: this one six years. Over that time we changed as people, and this too became documented in our little virtual world. What took us years of growth becomes a few weeks worth of character development for our personas. It feels like a lifetime ago and I don’t remember who we were. I see my reflection in the computer monitor and it isn’t me. I see possessions I still own, now beholden to new contexts, in a different home, with other people. I see you and your facsimile through the same screen; both are distant.

Black and white polaroid of Cel Davison sitting in a messy bedroom, in 2015

We visit each other when we can afford to and for a brief time we get a taste of how it used to be: except it’s different — except it’s better. It can’t last, because our governments uphold violent borders that keep us apart. We return to our computers, the sun nine hours apart, our lives out of sync; we continue our work; fractured. We gather from ourselves, rethinking the exhibition, allowing ourselves to be more vulnerable. Rolling that boulder up the hill:

“That how-did-he-say “gathered, all gathering thinking that recalls”
That devotional organ, my memory, I remember
The riddle written on my rib cage
The eternal recurrence of the same
The being of all becoming
The hammer and the heaviest thought banged into absurdity” (R.A.P Ferreira)

It has been six years, and I am tired of looking back. It’s getting more difficult to recall, as a fog thickens in my mind. I don’t want to live in or through memory: I am past that. I want to live here and now and with the people I love beside me. “We cling to bottles and memories of the past” (Bloc Party), because forming new moments is so difficult for us, but I am so ready, so I wait and I try to recall. Do you remember what I said to you? I don’t.

-Cel