mnemonic devices | The Che Underground

In my life

January 6, 2011April 4, 2010 by Mmrothenberg

(Megan S. asks where specific songs fit into your personal narrative.)

Remember that episode of M*A*S*H where a scent triggers Hawkeye to fall down the rabbit hole of unresolved pain from earlier in his life? Sound can do that too, especially songs.

Sometimes hearing a song can bring you back to a period in your life, a scene or even a specific incident. Often, the two are so intertwined it is impossible to revisit a memory without its soundtrack, or hear a song without your embedded storyboard. Lots of times, we have no control over the music or the situation; they all come together, merging, in the making of a memory.

El sabor de San Diego

December 11, 2017July 19, 2008 by Paul Kaufman

(For Marcel Proust, the evocative taste of a madeline inspired seven volumes of childhood reminiscence. When in San Diego, Manual Scan/Lemons Are Yellow vet Paul Kaufman employs a different memory aid — this one wrapped in a tortilla.)
Now that I live 2,000 light years from home, I often crave the foods of San Diego. Certainly, the most distinctive cuisine of Southern California came across the border from Mexico. And it wasn’t until I moved to the SF Bay area in late ’82 that I realized that a few items in the Mexican food of my youth were not replicated 500 miles to the north.

For me, the chief example is the burrito. In San Diego, burritos had lively and very strong individual personalities: carne asada meant grilled steak, with some guacamole and onion, and that’s it. There was no confusing it with a burrito based on a chicken stew or machaca.