Inspired by "My Book and Heart Shall Never Part"

Thursday night was a real treat and my first time ever at a world premiere. Lynda Sexson's visual essay, My Book and Heart Shall Never Part was visually, intellectually, and emotionally visceral. (Here is a link to a brief article with a summary of the film called Text to image: Sexson explores early children's books in new film.) The images of old texts and a story woven around and within them was beautifully crafted. In my previous blog I mentioned some ideas and questions Lynda presented to us in class which we saw in the film. It was a little dark in the theater to be taking notes, and I forgot a pen. But I remember one quote and I liked it a lot. "The earth comes down to earth."

While watching the film the guy sitting next to me, Sutter, leaned over and very exuberantly whispered, "that's Lindley Park!", then later he said, "Oh! and that's Cooper Park!" and the last, but most excited whisper, "Sam! That's Sourdough Trail!" This struck me. Yes the film was set in Bozeman, so why was Sutter so excited to recognize these places. He was just like a child, excited to see the familiar. This reminded me of what I had read in the Introduction to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Tan Lin. "The adult is a child whose childhood desires are something she hasn't learned to forget" (xxxii). Sutter was recognizing his backyard, the familiar, the comfortable. Being attatched to home is something very related to children because it is often hard for children to be away from home for very long. I know it took me a very long time to be able to spend one night away from my parents at a friends house. Tan Lin also says, "the reader's recognition is a repitition with a difference, because the repitition involves retelling. Repetition is about eternity and stopping time; repetition with a difference presupposes change and time passing" (xxxii). This fittingly and ironicly led me to think of the word, anamesis, which means, a recalling to memory; recollection or a reminiscence. William Wordsworth stresses the importance of memory and recollection in his "Ode: Intimations of Immortality." A short article by Khara House called The Role of Memory in Wordsworth's Ode: Intimations of Immortality says"William Wordsworth uses memory as a connective force between past and present, one’s ability to recall the joy of one’s past in order to, not know that it exists now, but find peace in the knowledge that it once existed. In this sense, according to Wordsworth’s poem, memory provides a form of recollection of a glorious beginning to life that passes away into commonalities as we age and mature."

So we need our memory in order to stay connected with our childhood that fades with maturity. Is this why there is that adult nostalgia concerning children's literature? Without something to help us recollect our chilhoods, then we could forget and by remembering our childhoods we can take comfort in knowing that it once existed as Wordsworth suggests.

And memory is always recollected back to Mnemosyne who was the Titan goddess of memory and remembrance and the inventress of language and words.