Time
Time nudges us like an elephant in the room. Exciting us if an anticipated event creeps closer or terrifying us if representing doom or the concept of loss. We are patronisingly informed that time heals all wounds and that when children are eccentric they are sure to grow up and settle down.
Memory is a fickle but wondrous thing. Might need nudging from where the stories languish in the vast spaces of the mansion of the mind or within half-forgotten communities with legends passed down, or else hidden amongst the religious texts, rolled and covered with dust in some stone monastery. Even hidden in plain sight within history books that extort what really happened until some anarchist hunter dares to challenge the lie. But nothing disappears once known.
Forgetting can lead to the sleep of freedom and the destruction of things we have no right to destroy. That’s never truer than in the twenty first century. Answers are at the click of an app. Letters rarely written. Photography and film are digital and could disappear in the blink of an eye should some despot introduce censorship and erase what they deem fit.
Ancient film footage, photographic negatives, hidden and preserved in deep archives or the cellars of the dead, can reveal events not realised. Revelation.
Martin McKenna, known as the Dog Man, left his home in Limerick, Ireland, because his father was a brutal drunk, and Martin had had enough of hurt. An admitted hyperactive, Martin lived on the streets of Limerick with a pack of dogs from when he was eleven. He is a famed dog whisperer and lives in Bangalow, Northern New South Wales, with his wife, an author, and three children. He came to my house one day at Willy McElroy’s suggestion (lead singer of the Wild Zinnias). I thought I might make a documentary of his life. That didn’t happen but what he told me has stuck in my mind.
Martin is intelligent. He is also illiterate. He is proud of his memory. We went from sunlight to twilight discussing Celtic legends, in particular those of Ireland. I’ve gained most of my knowledge from books whereas he’d been told by the old people and he remembered. He’d later been given the opportunity to learn to read and write but he was afraid of losing his memory.
Reading makes you lazy, he said. Why remember when you have your books to refer to?
At the end of our conversation he shook the back of my neck. A sign of friendship in dog language.
(Excerpt from my latest publication Initiation, a Memoir http://amzn.to/2fuNedJInitiation: A Memoir
Memory is a fickle but wondrous thing. Might need nudging from where the stories languish in the vast spaces of the mansion of the mind or within half-forgotten communities with legends passed down, or else hidden amongst the religious texts, rolled and covered with dust in some stone monastery. Even hidden in plain sight within history books that extort what really happened until some anarchist hunter dares to challenge the lie. But nothing disappears once known.
Forgetting can lead to the sleep of freedom and the destruction of things we have no right to destroy. That’s never truer than in the twenty first century. Answers are at the click of an app. Letters rarely written. Photography and film are digital and could disappear in the blink of an eye should some despot introduce censorship and erase what they deem fit.
Ancient film footage, photographic negatives, hidden and preserved in deep archives or the cellars of the dead, can reveal events not realised. Revelation.
Martin McKenna, known as the Dog Man, left his home in Limerick, Ireland, because his father was a brutal drunk, and Martin had had enough of hurt. An admitted hyperactive, Martin lived on the streets of Limerick with a pack of dogs from when he was eleven. He is a famed dog whisperer and lives in Bangalow, Northern New South Wales, with his wife, an author, and three children. He came to my house one day at Willy McElroy’s suggestion (lead singer of the Wild Zinnias). I thought I might make a documentary of his life. That didn’t happen but what he told me has stuck in my mind.
Martin is intelligent. He is also illiterate. He is proud of his memory. We went from sunlight to twilight discussing Celtic legends, in particular those of Ireland. I’ve gained most of my knowledge from books whereas he’d been told by the old people and he remembered. He’d later been given the opportunity to learn to read and write but he was afraid of losing his memory.
Reading makes you lazy, he said. Why remember when you have your books to refer to?
At the end of our conversation he shook the back of my neck. A sign of friendship in dog language.
(Excerpt from my latest publication Initiation, a Memoir http://amzn.to/2fuNedJInitiation: A Memoir
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