from the long overdue (re)readings XVIII

My generation was the first to have ready access to inexpensive tape recorders and cameras. Far from recording memories of these talks and events, what we seemed to be doing was storing memories that would never be retrieved, that would never form a coherent narrative. In the same way that our desk drawers and cabinet shelves slowly filled with these 'personal' sounds and images, we were beginning, it seemed to me, to live our lives in dissociated bits and pieces. The narrative spine of an individual life was disappearing. The order of events was becoming increasingly meaningless.

— Barry Lopez, from 'Learning to See' in About This Life. Journeys on the Threshold of Memory (NY: Knopf, 1998). 234.