The way we arrange our memory

Note: I am writing this response from memory of and copious notes taken from the book.



Again my apologies for the lateness of this submission but I'm happy to report my headache which I think bordered migraine is only vaguely pushing at my forehead now.

The 46 sparse poetic pages of story and image in Mother's Urn succeeded in drawing me into a world of heart ache, leaving me with rough unanswered questions and a sense of searching at the end.

I want to talk about a few things in this reflection that struck me in this work.


1) Image

Mother's Urn utilized an incredibly unconventional UBAPO approach to the interplay of text and image. I was interested in my response to the fact that the images and text were not created by the same person. When I started the piece trusted the images less than I have with the other graphic memoirs we have read in this class. I found myself wondering what was lost in the translation of Kalamity J's scattered memory to word, as these words as they then passed through the interpretive lens of an artist who perhaps had no original direct referential memory of the events described in the work from. This brings up really interesting questions for me about how we render truth, truthfully. Do we need to remember the things we write about in memoir? Within my own work I know I often rely on my imagination to see into events and circumstances that I did not live through but that I have lived the lingering impact of. I do due diligence to research as thoroughly as I am able to understand the surrounding circumstances of these events, however there are some things that only my experience of living as a human on earth - the complexity of emotion and sensation - can allow me to access what I perceive the experience of another might have been, based on the way their story has lived into my life. Kalamity J in the text seems to use this strategy herself, particularly in the first chapter of this work where she initially appears as a two year old baby. She richly recounts the love affair between her mother and the man who became her step father, seeing into environments and moments in time that she was not present for. So given all of this, is it fair that I trusted the images less? How was the artist's process of visually interpreting these stories really differ from Kalamity J's own work of remembering into things at times in this text could not?


2) Arrangement

I found Kalamity J's choice in the ordering of these stories deeply intriguing. She opens the piece in such a way that centres her mother as the main character to whom we build attachment immediately. In fact it is a number of pages in before we even find out that Kalamity already exists as the story we are being told is playing out. This choice maps for the reader the way in which her mother, and Kalamity J's longing for her - both in her mother's presence and absence - informs her sense of identity - at least in this work... and in my case this successfully caused me to also build a sense of their world around Kalamity's mother. In chapter two, when we find her mother absent she is continually called forward as Kalamity looks in the mirror and sees their resemblance, as she pieces together in memory pictures that she does not have, as she acts out the transmission of addictive behaviours inherited from her mother. I think the choice to open the story with the incredibly vulnerable and passionate scenes disarms us against her mother, whom in another rendering could be villanized considering the choices that she makes and their impact on her children. Instead Kalamity J's telling allows us as readers to understand her mother with complexity beyond the wounds of her present-absence and absence, with a level of humanity and compassion that at times seems surprising.

The closing to the last chapter to the piece left me with questions, some confusion and a sustained sense of longing. I found myself suffering story greed. I wanted to understand how, when, and what her mother had died of. And I wonder now if perhaps the motivation behind this choice was to keep the reader focused on that which she was struggling instead - it didn't matter why her mother wasn't there, that it was her absence itself, which can never be reconciled, even with the specific details. This is the first chapter in which we receive a direct and prolonged characterization of Kalamity's internal emotional world. Most of the piece allows for/asks the reader to infer what the emotional landscape is by providing snapshots of particular external moments against which we must imagine a child navigating her world and sense of self. This succeeds in drawing us emotionally in as readers because we come an accomplice to Kalamity's story.


2) Silence and Memory and Silence in Memory

This book also seems to be a treatment and exploration of memory. The way we remember people and events is often shaped by narrow elements of their full actuality. For example the way in which Kalamity's mother is often seen in image with a nose flowing with blood. Certain fixed images come to act as totems for the past.

The incredible thing about this piece is the way in which a whole world is built off of a collection of maybe ten memories, and imaginings into the past. That such a rich world can be rendered of of such sparse content is a reaffirming statement to us all I think - that what we remember is enough to know our stories in the way we need to know them.

As always tons more to say.

Light