Memories of bygone homes
“Sitting in the Dschungel
On Nurnberger Strasse
A man lost in time
Near Kadewe
Just walking the dead”
David Bowie wrote these lines about his time living in Berlin in the late 70’s. Forty years have passed. He ruminates on places once full of life, now gone, evoking a spaces that no longer exist because the people who made them have departed, leaving behind a haunted playground.
I have lived in London nearly four years now; the time has passed like a heartbeat. A blink. It’s only when I go “home” that I realise how much time has passed. Returning to my hometown is strange. Mostly the same with a few things moved around and fewer people I know: a gallery of memories, myself a ghost, stirred by sights or smells. New memories in this realm don’t feel possible.
Slight alterations to familiar places have the power to trigger you. My favourite tree on one running route has been cleared for a path. On the same run, I noticed that my old school is now a neat row of redbrick houses. It’s a sense of life moving on as if you were never there
To combat the sense that our mark on the world is receding, we can reflect on the people who share our happy memories. Those same memories can also torture us. I tend to hoard emotions, trying to keep the good things or people close to me, as if nothing’s changed. Perhaps I wish to exert control over things I know deep down to be ever changing.
How do we remember people when they‘re far away? The mind often feels like a mosaic of pictures on an infinite cycle. I once fell in love with a girl from school who taught me to eat a banana sideways. That little episode comes back to me, even now.
I try to keep these connections alive by sending them pictures of something we shared. Endlessly hanging on. Just. Although in today’s world there might not be time to talk, you can still nod to each other’s existence. A Scandinavian designer called Anders Lervik recently designed a pair of “twin” lamps, both of which light up when you touch one. The second lamp can be gifted to a loved one, to reduce the sense of separation.
Sharing energy feels important when we think of those who are no longer with us. We can’t send these messages out. We have to hope that they live somewhere within us. My Mother exists in one album, from one perfect summer. This distillation of us at our happiest, also contains a sadness, to think that she is shrinking into these photographs. I do not feel the urge to send her a picture of something that has reminded me of her, or touch the lamp…
Music is also a powerful store of memory. My mother still lives through a timeline of music that we shared. My first time appreciating the Beatles, listening to “Something” on a sunny day with my head out of the window of the car. Being handed a Leonard Cohen album on a battered TDK recordable tape after watching Black Beauty. Listening to Paul McCartney’s “Bluebird” on a sun dappled road and seeing a figure clad in white walking the road ahead of me, who I always thought would be there walking ahead.
Going back home and finding the place without the people just shows how important these people are. If there are still people to reach out to. Then reach out. If not. Then remember them as best you can.
