Memory – Page 33 – Auxiliary Memory

New to Me, Old to You?

I discovered popular music as a kiddo while riding around in my Daddy’s 1955 Pontiac, playing with the AM radio push-buttons. This was around 1958, and I was seven. For some reason my parents didn’t have a radio in the house, nor did they own a record player and records. Music wasn’t important in their life, but they seemed to love the music on TV, on the variety shows, where my Dad dug Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra and my mother would tell us kids to shut up so she could listen to Nat King Cole or Perry Como. Those crooners were so damn old, even then.

My parents would get especially excited if music clips of Benny Goodman or Glenn Miller played in an old movie. They’d tell my sister and I how that was their music. Big bands, with trumpets and clarinets, it seemed as ancient as Egypt. Music that felt new was the rock and roll music I found on the AM radio in the car. That music made my Dad turn red and shout, “Turn off that goddamn noise.”

I’m listening to Quicksilver Messenger Service, a San Francisco rock band from the late 1960s. Quicksilver still feels out of the womb new to me. Even though it’s forty years later, a much greater span of time than from Benny Goodman of the late 1930s to the late 1950s, Quicksilver didn’t get old to me. Why? Would kids hearing my music today feel it had been dug up by archeologists?

Is my music new to me, but old to you?

Listening to current pop music makes me feel old. It’s all made by teenagers, or over-the-hill burnouts in their twenties, but then the rock and roll of the 1950s was made by teenagers too. Time is doing a number on my head. Time is more than relative. I can feel young and old, both at the same time, just by listening to music.

JWH – 6/16/9

Fuel For Writing

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted anything on Auxiliary Memory. I’ve started several essays but never finished any. I also started a diet. I’ve notice over the years that there’s a relationship between calories and the number of words I produce. Cookies, cokes, cakes and candy fuel my mind for writing. Dieting leaves my brain lethargic, suitable only for watching TV. And man have I been watching TV this past two weeks! I’ve seen 33 episodes of Battlestar Galactica. I had to boost my Netflix from 1 disc at a time to 3 to keep up with my hunger for more shows, watching up to 4 episodes a night.

The difference between being active and passive is junk food. But since I’ve ballooned to 237 pounds I can’t keep feeding my creative drive. And those healthy fruits and vegetables just don’t stoke the fire to crank out words. I’ve got to find some kind of discipline to get back into writing. Without sweet calories, I guess I need to learn how to push myself by will-power alone.

Of course, I’ve got to ask myself why write at all? Not to mention the fact that I’ve been mentally beating myself up for the last couple years for writing on the blog instead of working on fiction. Blog writing is like practicing the piano. It’s very good for mental health. For the last decade I’ve been forgetting more and more words, and even how to pronounce them. When I started blog writing that boosted my ability to remember.

Getting old has other side affects besides the slowing of brain access speeds. There is a tendency to solidify thoughts in old age, so if you’re not careful you’ll parrot your frozen opinions whenever a response is needed. Exploring concepts in a blog helps break down comfortable old opinions into their basic parts so you can start over and remodel the rooms in your brain.

All this new thinking requires energy and time. My best time to write is mornings, but Monday through Friday I have work, and often on the weekends I have personal obligations. Writing at night requires lots of extra calories. The obvious solution is to get up at 4 or 5 in the morning and write before work, but right now I don’t have that kind of discipline. My body naturally wants to sleep until 6:30 am when the cats start meowing for their breakfast.

There are alternative fuels for writing. Sometimes playing loud music can stimulate my brain cells. Other times reading an inspiring article and taking a short nap to digest the thoughts will get me to jump up and start writing. I’ve never had the mental energy to write like a professional writer, that is to stick to writing like working a 9 to 5. Real writers can write when they’re not in the mood, or when they lack the energy. Real writers can’t not write, but I don’t have that demon.

One way or another I’ve got to find the energy to write. I would be tempted by artificial stimulants, but my old body can’t even handle caffeine anymore. I know I can’t stop writing because my mind would quickly start sliding downhill again.

JWH – 3/29/9

Blogging, WordPress and the Future

I’ve been blogging for awhile. I started with LiveJournal, and then moved to WordPress on my hosted site, and finally to WordPress.com. I like the convenience of WordPress.com maintaining everything, and I’m developing a wish-list of desired features I hope they will roll out in the near future.

First, let’s think about blogging in general. The basic idea is to write a post and get comments. Older posts are pushed down and stored away, and the general method used to find these older stories is either by categories, search box or calendar grouping. It’s pretty effective for what it does, but I wonder if other methods might be developed to organize the overall site and expand the theoretically limits of what it means to blog. WordPress is constantly adding new widgets, so their structure is built around adding features, so this post is going to suggest some features I want and imagine where I’d like blogging to evolve in the future.

Paid For Feature Modules

I don’t know if I can expect all my desired features for free, but what if each module was a paid add-on or part of a plus service? I have no idea how WordPress makes its money. It’s a great free service that doesn’t appear to use ads and what few add-on features they do sell don’t look like big revenue generators.

Some of the features I’m wishing for could be part of a $49.95/year plus package. I’ve invested a lot of time in WordPress, so I don’t mind paying. I don’t want them to go bust – I want WordPress to be around for generations to come. I assume WordPress wants to maintain their current marketing plan of offering a free service, but I can picture my blogging needs expanding, and I imagine so do others.

Right now there are too many Web 2.0 services. I can share my thoughts on WordPress, my photos on Picasa, computer work on Zoho.com, friendships on Facebook.com, genealogy on Ancestry.com, my book lists on LibraryThing.com, and so on.

What I’d like is one place to present the digital me. MySpace and Facebook want that place to be their services, but I’m not happy with those sites. They are too restricting. What I want is one place to combine all the features, and for now I’m thinking my blogging home at WordPress.com is the place to start. I have no idea if the people who produce WordPress want to be such an enterprise, but I’m guessing my desires are just part of an evolutionary process on the web and somebody will offer them.

The Digital Me

Let’s think of a blog as an analog for a person’s life. Right now blogs model people with the diary format. Before computers, memoirs and autobiographies were two ways to convey a person’s life. However, those formats depend on linear progress and some random discovery. When you meet someone at a party you don’t get to know them in a start at the beginning, end at the end, fashion. Generally you start talking about a subject, and this is covered by blogging with categories. But if you’ve ever been to a blog site of someone you like to read and they have a long list of categories it’s not very inviting. And if their current three posts are all boring then you’ll get the wrong idea, even if they wrote a brilliant post just before that.

Science fiction has for years imagined artificial beings or speculated on machines recording people’s minds and converting them into computer beings in artificial worlds. I’m thinking a blog could be something like that – a download of your personality. But you need a face to represent the whole of your being.

Table of Contents

Magazines use their covers and table of contents to promote their top stories, hoping an eye catching headline will get you to buy a whole magazine and read the rest of the issue. However, magazines are not good structures to model a person’s complete life, but the TOC could be a good format to use for an introduction, or your face. Home pages on blogs take you to the latest post. I’m wondering if WordPress could create a Table of Contents page to use as the default home page, something that would combine the features of the About page and table of contents, to welcome blog visitors and help bloggers introduce themselves, giving guests a bigger picture of what you are like. Also, let this page have more layout options, use a 2-3 column HTML table to organize the structure, and allow the maximum customization.

Since the word categories is already used, have an organizing unit called “Projects” to be a super-group above categories. I like the word “projects” because I like to think of organizing my life into projects. Marketing people might come up with a better word. Maybe tie it in with major personality traits. Here’s an example of what I mean. For the Table of Contents page have several user-created Topics or Projects called Family, Friends, Work, Hobbies, Travel, and Reviews. Under Reviews I might have category listings for Audio Books, Books, Movies, Television Shows, Music, etc. Under Family I might have categories for Parents, Wife, Kids, Genealogy, etc. Then allow each Topic/Project to have an icon or small photo in the layout, so visitors at a glance can see how the blog writer organizes his or her life.

TimeLine

Another fun format to add would be the TimeLine – something to help people remember when and were things happened. Since people have imprecise memories, you’d have to have a Date field that could handle years, months, seasons, and days. I don’t think hours and seconds would be needed. (Fall 1949, 12/7/82, January 1971, 1963.) Users could enter birthdays for family, and then school years and schools. That way people could quickly know how old they were in a during a particular school year, or what years they worked as a bag boy. Bloggers could enter dates for when they met people, got jobs, saw concerts, had children, went on vacations, etc. Additional fun features would be hyperlinks to web sites that show the TV schedules, top news, best selling books, big movies, etc. for each year to help prompt memories.

Lists

I like keeping a list of the books I’ve read, my favorites, the ones I own, favorite songs, my CD library, favorite movies, DVDs, movies seen, etc. Lots of people are list makers, and so having a list making module would be awful cool. Like the TimeLine module above, this would force WordPress to get into the database business, which moves them more into the Zoho.com type service. WordPress could offer both custom database applications and do-it-yourself kits.

Genealogy

Blogs are about people. I use my blog to help remember things. One of the things I’ve always meant to get into is genealogy – but not in a big way. What would be amusing for blogging is to enter enough information so it links to other genealogy sites and to other bloggers, so when you meet people you can glance at their ancestry and maybe check if you’re related. If this linkage grew eventually we’d be able to say to our blogs, “show a family blogging tree.”

Who Is Your Blog For?

When you’re typing away at your blog posts do you do it for friends, strangers, or yourself? I call my blog Auxiliary Memory because I’m getting more forgetful all the time. I really would like to use my blog as a supplemental brain. If WordPress had the security, I’d even like to save private information on my blog. Not bank account numbers, but just data only I would want to see when I’m trying to remember something, maybe something personal like address books, Christmas card lists, work and home To-Do lists, etc. I’d also like to keep my last will and testament and parting thoughts, so when I die, especially unexpected, I can leave some last messages.

Now do you see what I mean when I think of a blog as a digital analog of myself? Right now blogs are a collection basket for thoughts, but it could collect other personal items, like photographs.

Photos and Time and Place

There are plenty of online photo galleries for people to share their pictures, but I’d like one integrated into WordPress. Why separate thoughts from images. I’d like to tie photographs to the TimeLine and to the Genealogy. Currently we enter posts by today’s date and time, but I’d like to be offered a field that would let me enter posts for past dates and time, that way I could organize my photographs chronologically, and work to remember the past.

It’s quite obvious what would happen if you could link photos to genealogies. I’d also like to link photos to streets and cities, and I would like to connect to other people to share photos linked by time and place. I moved around a lot when I was a kid. Imagine putting all my photos from Maine Avenue when I lived at Homestead Air Force Base from 1962-63 into the system and someday getting a message from long lost friends who went to Air Base Elementary with me?

Photo Rotation and Linking

Right now we get one photo for our header to represent our personality. It would be great to draw from a pool, so on some pages visitors would see images from a random rotation from the pool of personal or stock photos and for other pages, specific photos to go with the content of the post.

This would be a nightmare to roll out for WordPress. It’s much easier to manage the system when there’s a limited number of templates for users to build their sites. For this to be practical, WordPress needs to designate certain sized photographs – so all header photos would be the same size for a particular template, as they do now, but offer you the system to switch photos on the fly. When you create a new post you’d have the opportunity to link to a photo pool folder or link to an individual photo. This wouldn’t require a major programming change, and WordPress would sell a lot more space. Of course, it would be nice to link to Flash videos and animations too.

I’m Sure You Get My Point By Now

By now you should see the trend. I supposed with XML and web services many of these features could originate on companies outside of WordPress, or allow these features to work across all blogging sites. I love the idea of OpenID and that needs to be expanded. Selecting a blogging service like WordPress, Blogger, LiveJournal is like selecting a nationality, but we shouldn’t have language barriers to keep us from communicating across borders.

It may even be possible that various blogging services could work together so you’d have memberships on more than one service and combine the results. I see people trying to do this now but the results are disjointed, like they have multiple personalities, or they want to have separate public identities. I hate when I leave a reply on a Blogger site and it wants to send people to my Google identity rather than my WordPress identity. My FaceBook page should just have a widget that displays my WordPress blog instead of trying to duplicate a blogging feature.

Has anyone thought about the ramifications for blogging for decades? Or generations? Permanent storage needs to be addressed for historical purposes. I always like to ask people, “What would the world be like if Jesus had a blog and we could read it today.” Whose blog would you want to read from history? File and data formats are going to have to become standard if they are going to be readable in a thousand years. And if you spend a lifetime crafting your blog so it represents who you are, do you want it to die just because your body can’t go on?

These are just some idle thoughts on my part. Start thinking about what blogs could really become. Just wait a few years for when WordPress rolls out its AI widget that allows you to program a talking personality to go with your blog. All it’s personality will be based on your past blog entries. Eventually, we’ll be able to talk to our AI and it will automatically create our posts just from interviewing us.

Jim

Pulp Fiction

Long ago, before Quentin Tarantino’s great film, before I was born in 1951, before television, there was pulp fiction. It was called pulp fiction because of the grade of paper the stories were printed on was called pulp, and a whole entertainment industry was built around selling magazines with short stories and serialized novels wrapped in crude color reproductions of what is now called pulp art.

When I was young I often met older science fiction fans that collected these magazines, but surely, most of the kids of the generation before me, who grew up loving to read pulp fiction, must be very old, if still living, and the pulp fiction generation surely must be dying out. Yet, over at Fantasy & Science Fiction they are running an article, “The New Nostalgia: The Classic Pulp Story Revival” by Dave Truesdale that chronicles how several small press publishers are keeping the pulp fiction tradition alive with quality hardbound reprints. This article is well worth reading on many levels because it renews memories of a few old authors and their best stories and informs about the sub-culture of the small press publishing.

Pulp fiction has also been kept alive by the legacy of comic books and their impact on the movies with all the classic super heroes being reinvented every year, and reoccurring pulp action films like the Indiana Jones series or the remake of King Kong. Comics are the direct descendants of pulp magazines that featured cruder art and stories for the younger readers on the same pulp paper. Pulp fiction was never literary but a few fine writers like Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler came out of the tradition. Most of the prose was purple and all action, and aimed at the poorly educated, often featuring very politically incorrect attitudes about race, gender, ethnic groups, and foreigners. Society and the well bred looked down on the lowly pulp fiction fan.

Evidently, old pulp fiction is finding new younger readers through the popularity of action movies, reprints and inherited nostalgia. When I was growing up in the 1950s and 1960s much of the best pulp fiction, including mysteries, westerns, science fiction, adventure, spy, thrillers and other genres were reprinted as cheap paperbacks for 25 and 35 cents, but now the buy-in price are $40 deluxe volumes.

There was always a tremendous vitality to pulp fiction, which explained why titles included words like astounding, thrilling, amazing, wonder, adventure, fantastic, and that wink-wink keyword, spicy. Science fiction really is a child of pulp fiction, and I think many readers hated the change that the New Wave brought to the genre during the 1960s, where emerging writers tried to force science fiction out of the gutter and into the classroom where the revolutionaries wanted it to wear literary robes. Today science fiction is often represented in the minds of the public at large by Star Trek and Star Wars, but those stories owe a lot to two pulp fiction superstars: E. E. “Doc” Smith and Edward Hamilton.

If you want to sample classic science fiction pulp stories, and not spend too much money, I recommend tracking down copies of two anthologies: Before the Golden Age edited by Isaac Asimov and Adventures in Time and Space edited by Raymond J. Healy and J. Francis McComas. These books collect some of the best SF short stories from 1931-1945. You can find both at ABEBooks.com, but watch out, both fat original hardback anthologies were often reprinted as multi-volume paperback books, and it would be worth your while to use the advance search and specify hardback editions, thus saving you on total costs and postage. These two books will give you a great education about the foundation of science fiction.

The URLs linked to these titles also give you table of contents for the stories which if you are really hoarding your gasoline dollars might find on the web for free. Now, as you read the stories, consider these issues:

One, are they still fun to read? Are they as fun as reading Harry Potter or any of your other current favorite writers? Second, do the ideas seem stupid, in the light of modern knowledge? Third, do you notice why I call them politically incorrect? Fourth, can you tell the difference between pulp fiction writing and modern MFA writing (The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao), or even modern genre writing (Charlie Stross and John Scalzi)? Fifth, are these stories worth preserving? Sixth, are they worth your reading time over reading newer stories?

All fiction from 1900-1950 is thinning out fast in our collective memories, and few stories from that era get reprinted. I’m not just talking about pulp fiction. If you can, find a copy of Best American Short Stories from before 1950 and some original pulp magazines. Most of the contents from either will never have seen print since the original publications. The small presses that are reprinting classic pulp fiction stories, are really just rescuing one story in a thousand, maybe one in ten thousand.

Looking at the periods 1800-1850 and 1850-1900, only the rarest of stories are still read by modern readers. Baby boomers can remember the famous books they read from 1950-2000, but how many of the following generations know about those best selling titles? My guess is the pulp fiction nostalgia is for the boomers who can remember reading pulp fiction from its first generation of reprints. I would imagine, out of all the genres only a handful of novels will become classics, like The Maltese Falcon, Tarzan of the Apes, Conan the Barbarian, and Riders of the Purple Sage. But how many kids under 16 discover these tales?

I occasionally enjoy reading an old pulp story and appreciate these small press publishers bringing back old favorites by Leigh Brackett, C. L. Moore, Robert E. Howard and Jack Williamson that I first discovered in used editions of Ace Doubles. I think my identity is partly based on pulp fiction, and I feel I help keep these old friends alive by continuing to read them. I know all of my generation and the stories we loved will soon pass on and be forgotten, but it’s pleasant to think a few of the stories will survive and future generations will enjoy them and wonder about their fans.

Jim

1965

Yesterday I discovered Playa Cofi Jukebox, an Internet radio station that lets listeners time travel back to any year from 1950-1982 to hear a rotation of the top 100 songs from that year. I immediately jumped to 1965 and was transported to my all-time favorite musical year. Go look at that link and see if you can think of any year that has more fantastic hits. What year do you most identify with musically? While I natter away about 1965 always substitute your favorite year and remember your songs.

I’ve been wishing for such an invention for a long time now. Actually, I’d even like to pick the month and year, but I’m overjoyed to have a by year destination for now. I’ve often daydreamed of collecting music with an idea of creating playlists on my computer so I could fake late night radio shows I heard in my kid days while discovering science fiction books.

I’d love to hear the old WQAM and WFUN AM stations from 1961-1967 Miami – and poking around the Internet shows that other people remember those stations with lots of fond nostalgia too. I’m guessing there is something in our biochemistry that burns the pop culture of our teen years into our brains so nothing else ever seems as exciting.

I often reread the books I discovered in 1965 – mostly the twelve Heinlein juveniles that were first published in the 1950s. The books still move me as much as the music. But I have discovered when I see TV shows from that year like Lost in Space, Green Acres, I Dream of Jeannie, The Wild Wild West and Get Smart I have to wonder if I wasn’t simple-minded back then. I know that science fiction and rock music back then wasn’t that sophisticated either, but they feel like art today whereas the television shows seem silly.

I have to wonder how much of the 1965 me is still stored in my brain? Physicists still grapple with the concept of time, some even theorize that time doesn’t exist – suggesting that we live in a continual succession of nows. I know my old brain now is much different from my young brain then, but I’m guessing much of the same programming and circuitry still exist. If I put on 1965 on the Playa Cofi jukebox and start reading Starman Jones by Robert A. Heinlein how close can I get to the original experience? Time appears to be change, but what is changing?

What if I had a brain injury or Alzheimer’s and did this experiment? What if I could move back to my old house in Miami. Would it feel like 1965? Would I feel like I’m 13 and something really bad happened to my body?

Why do science fiction writers and readers love the concept of time travel? Wouldn’t time travel also involve space travel? Wouldn’t we have to jump in a space ship and go back to the coordinates of where Earth was forty-three years ago? (Oddly The Shangri-Las was singing “I Can Never Go Home Anymore,” And “Turn! Turn! Turn!” by the Byrds just started playing. Very appropriate songs for this essay. What synergy with 1965.)

The Earth has gone around the Sun forty-three times, and the solar system has moved around the galaxy, and the Milky Way has moved in whatever direction it is heading, and the Universe is expanding. It’s damn hard to believe that time travel will ever be possible, but it’s also hard to imagine that time does not exist either.

The question I really should ask myself: Why would I want to time travel to 1965? Is it because I had so much fun listening to WQAM and reading Heinlein and watching The Man From U.N.C.L.E. on television? Don’t we all time travel every day when we turn on our TVs and watch movies from the past hundred years?

What is something I couldn’t do now, that I could do then? For one thing, I could go see Bob Dylan perform during the height of his talent. (“Mr. Tambourine Man” just started playing after I typed the words Bob Dylan – this is getting spooky.) How important is that? What does it tell me? I guess I’d like to do all the things back in 1965 that I didn’t do the first time around but wanted to so badly. (The Animals just started singing “We Gotta Get Out of this Place.”)

And I think the Animals song is informative. I think one of the basic urges for time travel is the same as space travel, we just want to go somewhere in space-time where we think it’s better. Was 1965 really a better place? (Jesus, this is starting to weird me out, Sonny and Cher just started singing, “Baby Don’t Go.”) Maybe they’re right, now is the only place that counts.

This makes me wonder how many science fiction fans would jump at a chance to go somewhere fantastic. If a powerful being suddenly appeared in your room right now and commanded: “Name a destination in the universe – any time, anywhere, and I’ll send you there right now” would you jump at the chance? (The Shangri-Las are back and singing, “The Leader of the Pack.” – Umm)

Let’s imagine I say, “Miami, 1965” – and pop I’m there. What would I do then? (I wished I had written “and clap I’m there,” because Shirley Ellis just started singing “The Clapping Song.”) The first thing I’d have to do is get out of my old house because my parents, who would be younger than me now, would find a stranger invading their house very scary. I’d be out on the streets and homeless.

(The Moody Blues just started singing “Go Now.” – I’m not making this up. If you could hear the song like I hear it, it has mystical thrills. It always had.)

The job of a time traveler is a tough one. At least in 1965 Miami, everyone speaks my language, but walking the streets with only the clothes on my back and a wallet full of funny money wouldn’t be an easy start to a new life. (I hear Joe Tex telling me to hold on to what I’ve got.)

A lot of science fiction stories starts with this very problem, remember John Carter arriving on Mars. But how many of us would buy a ticket to another city and start an adventure by being homeless. (The Four Seasons sings “Let’s Hang On” repeating and emphasizing the wisdom of Joe Tex “Let’s hang on to what we’ve got”)

I guess 1965 is telling me to stay home in 2008. What if I never owned a radio or discovered Heinlein in 1965? What if I had taken up sports instead and all my memories of 1965 would be about ball games – this essay would be about how I remember seeing some great games. Time is always something we did. The year 1965 is just a label I put on a period of my life when pop culture was very impressionable on my mind. For other people that might be 1983 or 1942, and all my fond memories would be meaningless to them. In forty-three years some guy is going to be writing about 2008 and his nostalgic memories of Rap music.

Last night my wife and I had a party at our house celebrating our 30th wedding anniversary and everyone sat around trying to remember 1978. Our wedding reception had been at my wife’s parent’s house, the house where we live now. And a number of people who had been there thirty years ago sat around looking at photos of the 1978 event. We sure do love to time travel. In 1965 I was terribly anxious to live in the 21st century. I wonder if I’ll ever live in a year that is the one I want to be living in?

The Four Seasons just started singing, “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right (The Wonder Who).” I think I spend too much time thinking twice. I can’t go home to 1965, but along the way time has eroded my desire to live in the future. I think reality has overtaken science fiction.

I keep waiting for The Rolling Stones to sing, “Time is On My Side,” which came out in late 64 and was popular in 1965. I need to get over looking backwards. What I really want from 1965 is a way to live looking forward again. I need to stop thinking about 1965, and start planning for 2065. Having a grand distant future inside of you waiting to unfold is the way to feel young again.

Jim