The Memory Artists Part 1

The Memory Artists.

by Jeffrey Moore.

Foreword.

What follows is a true story. For over twenty years I studied a fascinating individual, a hypermnesic synaesthete referred to as "NB" in my numerous monographs and handbooks. Near the end of our relations.h.i.+p, in the winter/spring of 2002, NB and his mother (SB) came into contact with three partic.i.p.ants (NXB, SD, JJY) in memory experiments I was conducting or overseeing. This contact proved serendipitous, the pharmacological equivalent of throwing five volatile compounds into a crucible and coming up with a miracle drug.

The professional writer-translator a.s.signed to recount their story has combined "dramatic reconstructions" with interviews, laboratory notes and diary entries. These records have not been altered, even when unflattering to me personally; in the interests of science, and as a matter of historical record, I have considered it my duty to disguise nothing and suppress nothing. Because post-postmodernism is not my "bag" (my slang may not be current) and English not my "strong suit" (my mother tongues are French and German), I have made only minor revisions to the prose, excising weak or superfluous pa.s.sages when sure that excision would improve, and bolstering the text with brief endnotes (keep a bookmark in page 299!).

And now the obvious question. Why another another book on this scientific odyssey, at least the third in the past year? Everyone knows that a ground-breaking discovery in the field of memory was made under my enlightened auspices. Everyone knows that for this I was awarded a prestigious Scandinavian prize. Mere hours after my return from Europe, however, controversy began to swirl like fumes from a poisonous gas. Blinded, it would appear, by the demonry of a mythomaniacal "whistleblower," three American newspapers, in serpentine fas.h.i.+on, have accused me of taking credit for a discovery I did not make-and of professional conduct tantamount to murder. book on this scientific odyssey, at least the third in the past year? Everyone knows that a ground-breaking discovery in the field of memory was made under my enlightened auspices. Everyone knows that for this I was awarded a prestigious Scandinavian prize. Mere hours after my return from Europe, however, controversy began to swirl like fumes from a poisonous gas. Blinded, it would appear, by the demonry of a mythomaniacal "whistleblower," three American newspapers, in serpentine fas.h.i.+on, have accused me of taking credit for a discovery I did not make-and of professional conduct tantamount to murder.

Now semi-retired, my glory days behind me, I wish neither to tarnish NB's reputation (in his way, the young man was a genius) nor burnish my own. Before sinking, however, into that black pit of forgetfulness, the final amnesia, I wish to set the record straight-for my wife, for my daughter, and for the history of medicine.

eMILE VORTA, M.Litt., MD, PhD Neuropsychologist and Professor Emeritus Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Quebec Editor-in-Chief, editions Memento Vivere writeaprisoner.com

Chapter 1.

"NB"

Most people want to learn how to remember more; for Noel Burun, the big task, the most burdensome, was to learn how to forget. Not only the painful things in life, which we all want wiped away, but things in general. For whenever Noel heard a voice or read a word, multicoloured shapes would form inside his head that served as markers or maps, helping him to recollect, in the minutest detail, an emotion, a mood, a tone of voice, the words themselves-of events that happened up to three decades ago.

Back in 1978, for example, when they came to tell him his father was dead, this is what lit up Noel's nine-year-old brain: A dry and crumbly voice like kitty litter ... [turning into] a pockmarked strip of tarnished bra.s.s, which tapered swordlike, seemed to disappear, then reappeared as a blood-red pendulum. It began to sway, in brighter and brighter reds, blindingly, and then a change, another voice, a spongy yolk-yellow blob with throbbing burnt-rose rings. A louder, higher voice interrupted, a cruciform shape, cranberry at its nave, the lightness fading from the centre outwards so that the edges appeared pearl white. Another voice, bra.s.sy and belching like a ba.s.s trombone, and a streak of lightning, jagged-edged and barium yellow, split the sky of my brain in two. Slowly, the serrations melted away, the yellow disintegrating into pulsating steel, and it felt like a dagger had pierced my spine. Then the gravelly voice again from the man in front of me, the tarnished bra.s.s and then ... silence, against a backdrop of Etch-A-Sketch grey. The "dead mood," I used to call it, the lull before things returned to normal. I opened my eyes: my mother was speaking, her throat strangling each syllable. A black-suited man from Adventa Pharmaceuticals was trying to comfort her, while two moustachioed men in navy blue stared at me ...1 Especially when he was younger and didn't know how to stop them, these images could explode like endlessly exploding fireworks, triggering more and more colour patterns and memory cl.u.s.ters, carrying him so far adrift, so far into the back alleys of his universe that he had trouble following even the simplest conversation. Unless it was pa.s.sive communication, like watching television, Noel needed to absorb absorb a person's voice, experience the distinct colours and shapes, before he could decipher the words themselves. a person's voice, experience the distinct colours and shapes, before he could decipher the words themselves.

Not surprisingly, everyone thought Noel was off his head, and that was fine with him. His mother loved him, his father loved him, and because of the colours in his head he was able to miss more school than all his cla.s.smates combined. The images, moreover, had a practical purpose: although I've got little else going for me, Noel often thought, I've got a fantastic memory. Which sometimes comes in handy.

When he did go to school his cla.s.smates taunted him mercilessly ("It would've been better," one of them confided, "if you'd never been born"), but eventually they got used to his vacant spells and fog. "Commander Noel" was on one of his "s.p.a.cewalks." His teachers, especially at first, would react with annoyance or sarcasm: "Is this, ahem, one of your convenient periods of mental unemployment, my dear Burun?" And everyone would laugh. When he told them, in private, about the colliding colours, they immediately suspected drug abuse: it sounded very much like LSD or mescaline or some newfangled hallucinogen. Was this a matter for the authorities? And so the rumours spread. The brains and dweebs avoided him, whereas people like Radar Nenon, the school's first acid-popping punk, took a sudden liking to him. He'd finally found someone who saw stranger things than he did.

"Schizophrenics have abnormal colour perceptions," one teacher told him, while another said that "It's got to be aphasia or autism, one or the other." The school nurse, a chronically irate Welsh widow, had another explanation: "You've got a definite defect, son. Deprived of oxygen in the womb perhaps-or dropped headfirst off the delivery table." But it was none of the above, as he soon found out from a friend of his father's, a renowned Montreal neurologist named emile Vorta.

"Congratulations," said the doctor with unaccountable good cheer, in French, after a mind-deadening battery of perception and memory tests. "You're one in twenty thousand. You're blessed-although sometimes you may feel cursed-with a complex sensitivity known as synaesthesia synaesthesia."2 Why is he so happy? Noel wondered, as the doctor shook his little hand. Because he can experiment on me like one of his chimpanzees?3 "You're the first male synaesthete I've met. Now, I want you to do something that will help us both a great deal. I want you to keep a diary. Do you know what a diary is?"

"Yes, I already keep one."

"A diary is a book in which you write down things that happened to you during the day. Or the events of your past. Or in your dreams-"

"Once I dreamt I was walking through this gigantic crossword puzzle-"

"Or the colours and shapes you see in your head when people talk to you. And I'd like to see it at the end of every month. Do you understand?"

"Sometimes when people talk I wish I had a decoder ring-"

"Does anyone else in your family have anything like ... what you have?"

Noel paused. "Why, is there a genetic component a.s.sociated with this condition, Doctor?"

Dr. Vorta paused. There is more to this child than meets the eye. Seven years old! "As a matter of fact there is ... as you say, a genetic component a.s.sociated with this condition."

"Well, my mom's mom had some strange things in her head like me. Dad thought it was her brandy pudding. She made it triple-strength and one time I-"

"Very interesting. Yes, it's most often pa.s.sed on through the female side."

"She was a witch. A good witch."

"Was she really?"

"We got tons of letters from her from Scotland-with magic spells inside-except we can't find them. When we moved we lost them. I met her once."

"Did you really?"

"I pushed her rocking chair when n.o.body was sitting in it and she said that's bad luck, ghosts come and sit in it."

"You don't say? Well, we'll have lots of time to talk about all that. I think we'll be spending a lot of time together. Would you like that?"

"Not really. She had two different shoes on-because she broke in her shoes one at a time, Mom said. And her tongue was black, from chewing charcoal biscuits-to stop her from farting, Dad said."

To Noel's father, in the waiting room, Dr. Vorta ended his excited diagnosis with, "Congratulations, Henry. Your son's in good company, very good company indeed. Liszt, Rimsky-Korsakov and Scriabin all had synaesthesia, and so did Baudelaire, Rimbaud and Proust!"4 A man of thwarted artistic ambitions, Mr. Burun beamed at the news. "You forgot Nabokov," he added.

"And the odd n.o.bel prize-winning scientist!"5 "emile, this calls for a drink."

Like complicitous schoolboys the two couldn't stop grinning, or pumping each other's hand, as though this were the greatest, the most promising thing on earth. Noel wasn't smiling at all.

[image]

"What is the highest form of art?" Mr. Burun asked his son the following evening, after dinner. "What is the ne plus ultra ne plus ultra, the zenith of creative endeavour?" He would always talk this way to his son, even when he was in the crib. No baby talk. Not good for the child's cerebral development.

"Jack of hearts, jack of clubs," was the reply. "Two of clubs, two of spades. Ten of hearts ... four of diamonds. Your turn."

"Noel, I've asked you a question. What do you think the highest form of art is?"

Noel looked up from the cards and slowly scrutinised each object in the room, as if the answer could be found in one of them. His gaze rested on their Zenith television console, whose portals were now locked, as they often were. "TV?" he replied.

His father shook his head. "No, TV's in the dungeon. There's no art form below that. Because of it children no longer read. We must all curse its Faustian inventor, Vladimir Zworykin."

If he had understood this, Noel would have violently disagreed. He looked at the walls, at the stereo cabinet. "Painting?" he suggested. "Or maybe music?"

"They're up there, but they don't have the most important thing. What do you think the most important thing is? When communicating something."

Noel knew the answer to this one. "Words."

"Exactly. So what combines words, images and music?"

"Cartoons?"

"True. What else?"

"Movies?"

"What else?"

Noel paused, closed his eyes. "Poems?"

"Dead on. At the top of the heap is poetry, at least as it used to be written. Nothing else goes as far, nothing goes as deep in the blood and soul. Shakespeare surpa.s.ses Beethoven because he had sound and and meaning. Always remember that as you get older. Poetry is in the empyrean, TV is in the pit." meaning. Always remember that as you get older. Poetry is in the empyrean, TV is in the pit."

Noel nodded. "Poetry is in the empyrean, TV is in the pit," he whispered to himself, remembering the words, not understanding the sentence. "It's your turn," he said.

But his father's mind was not on the game. "Scientists can talk about human nature, but only poets can free those feelings we keep in the pent heart."

"Your turn, Dad."

They were sitting cross-legged on the brown s.h.a.g rug of their living room in Montreal's Mile End, midway through the child's game of "Remembrance." You may know it: fifty-two cards are spread face down; you turn up two cards at random, put them in your pile if they match, turn them back down if they don't. And remember where they were for next time. It was Noel's very first card game, learned-and mastered-when he was three. He never tired of it.

"Queen of spades," said his father, turning over one of the cards. He scanned the sea of pirate s.h.i.+ps, with black ensigns and blazing cannon. One of them he overturned. "s.h.i.+te. I mean shoot. Nine of hearts."

"Nine of hearts," Noel repeated, coolly turning over the same card. "And nine of diamonds ..."

While observing his son, Mr. Burun pulled hard on a meerschaum pipe with a sultan-head bowl, which he had bought in Turkey when younger and happier. "The mother of the Muses was the G.o.ddess of Memory," he said, pursuing his theme, and he might as well have been speaking in Turkish.

"Four of hearts and ... four of clubs. Jack of diamonds, jack of spades ..."

"Mnemosyne was her name. The G.o.ddess of Memory."

"Nine of spades, nine of clubs ..." Nim-oss-enee, the mother of the muses, the G.o.ddess of Memory, Noel repeated to himself, depositing the words in his electron vault, the combination encrypted in colours and shapes. Where's all this heading? he wondered. "What's a muse?" he asked, because he knew his father liked questions.

"A muse is something ... someone who inspires you, in art, a guiding spirit. In Greek mythology there were nine of them, a band of lovely sisters." Mr. Burun looked up to the ceiling, closed his eyes. "'He is happy whom the Muses love,' says Hesiod. 'For though a man has sorrow and grief in his soul, yet when the servant of the Muses sings, at once he forgets his dark thoughts and remembers not his troubles.'"

Silence gathered as Noel stared. "Are you on something, Dad?"

His father opened his eyes, set his pipe down in the ashtray. "So why was the G.o.ddess of Memory linked with artistic creation, you may well ask."

No, I wasn't going to ask that, thought Noel. Let's play.

"Because for the Greeks creativity wasn't a.s.sociated with the idea of producing something new-as it is today. The artist built upon, or reworked, the great intellectual and cultural achievements of the past. So a great memory, you see, was considered a key part of creative activity- it gave the artist more material to draw upon, as well as a richer, more complex intellect. When James Joyce said 'I invented nothing, but I forgot nothing either,' I think he was referring to exactly this sort of thing."

Noel glanced at the bowl of his father's pipe. Hydrous magnesium silicate, he recalled, H4Mg2Si3O10. "Ace of diamonds," he said. "King of spades."

"Ah, a rare lapse from the memory artist. Ace of diamonds ... ace of spades. Eight of diamonds ... d.a.m.n it, the king of hearts-the self-killing king, the suicide sovereign. Look, Noel, how he stabs himself in the side of his head."

"Eight of diamonds, eight of hearts." The suicide sovereign? The suicide sovereign? "Five of hearts, five of clubs ..." There were now only a dozen cards left and Noel matched them all. "Five of hearts, five of clubs ..." There were now only a dozen cards left and Noel matched them all.

"Well done, Noel, I'm proud of you. You've got the memory of your late grandmother. Now she she would've given you a run for your money. You're very lucky, lad-with a brain like yours, you'll go far." would've given you a run for your money. You're very lucky, lad-with a brain like yours, you'll go far."

Mrs. Burun entered the room, hugging herself as if she were cold, and Noel launched himself into her arms. "I won, Mother! I'm like Nana when she was late and I'm going to go far!"

"Yes you are, Noel dear." His mother smiled. "You're my little genius, aren't you, you're my ..."

He could listen to his mom's voice forever, and his dad's too. They didn't confuse him like everyone else's; they didn't scramble his brainwaves. Years later, he was never able to understand why people complained about their parents. He always a.s.sumed everyone had parents like his: perfect and beautiful in every way.

"We were talking about the importance of poetry," his father explained, while tapping his pipe against a swan-shaped ashtray on which Noel had affixed a New York Islanders decal. "In this secular world, this spiritually dead world, poets are all we have left. Remember that, Noel. And remember you have an ill.u.s.trious ancestor-a Burun from way back."

"Do you know what an ancestor is, Noel?" his mother asked while stroking his hair. He felt euphoric whenever his mother stroked his hair. As she spoke he saw blades of burnt-orange gra.s.s swaying gently in magenta mist.

"Noel, did you hear me? Is your colour-wheel spinning?"

"Yes, Mother, I ... What did you say?"

"I asked if you knew what an ancestor was?"

"It's someone who lived before you. I mean, in your family."

"That's right," said his father. "And do you know who your great ancestor was?"

"Well," his mother began, "we don't know for certain that-"

"We've got the charts, the trees to prove it. A long line of melancholics, suicides, arsonists, incestuous paedophiles ..."

"Who's my ancestor?" Noel asked.

His father set down his pipe and paused for dramatic effect. "George Gordon. The Sixth Baron Byron of Rochdale."

Noel nodded, mulled this over. He looked at his smiling father for a cue or clue, and then at his smiling mother. "But our last name is Burun."

"Burun is the ancient Scottish form of Byron," his mother explained. "Ralph de Burun, who may be a distant relation of your father's, is mentioned in Domesday."

Noel repeated the names slowly to himself, noting the coloured shapes of the letters. His mother was a history teacher, so she knew what she was talking about. "But who ... who was he?"

His father smiled. "Lord Byron? Merely the greatest poet of the nineteenth century."

"Well, perhaps one of the greatest," said his mother. "Certainly the handsomest-as handsome as you, Noel dear. With the same lovely chestnut curls and steel blue eyes."

"Takes after his mother on that count," said Mr. Burun as he walked over to a library wall with three divided bookcases, devoted to history, poetry and chemistry respectively. "Thank G.o.d." He stepped upon a metal stool and from the middle case pulled out a slender, fawn-coloured volume. On the soft leather cover, The Romantic Poets The Romantic Poets was emblazoned in gold. "This was your grandmother's, and was emblazoned in gold. "This was your grandmother's, and her her mother's, published in Edinburgh in 1873. Take a look inside. It's ill.u.s.trated." mother's, published in Edinburgh in 1873. Take a look inside. It's ill.u.s.trated."

Neither parent was surprised to hear Noel recite all twenty poems by Byron at the breakfast table the next day, without the book, misp.r.o.nouncing scores of words between mouthfuls of Count Chocula. This sort of thing had happened before, lots of times, the first when Noel was five, when he had become so wrapped up in his Children's Treasury edition of The Arabian Nights The Arabian Nights that his mother threatened to take it away from him, worried he was spending too much time with it, "obsessing" over it, stubbornly refusing to read anything else. Terrified of losing his favourite book, which was almost his entire life at this point, Noel decided to stay up all night and memorise its fifty-two pages. that his mother threatened to take it away from him, worried he was spending too much time with it, "obsessing" over it, stubbornly refusing to read anything else. Terrified of losing his favourite book, which was almost his entire life at this point, Noel decided to stay up all night and memorise its fifty-two pages.

How did he do it? Noel had two methods, one involving "photographs" of coloured letters, the other involving "maps," which is the one he used here. As he explained later to Dr. Vorta, he "delivered the words like newspapers" in mental rows or sequences, along actual pathways-indoors and out-that he pictured in his mind: It's like you're taking a walk inside your head, like in a dream. You see yourself going on a trip, right? And you drop the words or sometimes big chunks of words at different spots. Like down the hall you come to a vent, right? So you put some words down the vent and then you come under a picture, so you put some words there, and then you come to the door, or the stairs or maybe a room. And you might go into the room. Like if it's a living room, you put stuff under chairs, tables, lamps, or if it's the kitchen you put words in the fridge or the oven or down the toaster ... Or you could use the attic or crawls.p.a.ce too, or you could go outside, on the sidewalk, or through fields or parks or parking lots, or gardens, and you could put words at certain trees or flowers, or down manholes, or at traffic lights or stores or churches ... Every memory trip is different. And you just dump a bit here and a bit there and for some reason everything is clear, like a paper route when you just remember the houses, you don't look at the numbers anymore ... And at the end it's always the same-I'm lying on my old bed in Babylon, or my new bed in Montreal, with Farquhar beside me-he's a King Charles spaniel.6 This explains how, that morning at the breakfast table, Noel was able to recite the Byron poems in reverse order too; he had only to start his walk from the end (".innocent is love whose heart ... like beauty in walks She").

After an article appeared in Psychology Today Psychology Today, stories by the dozen began appearing in newspapers and magazines.7 The phone began to ring as well. Everyone, it appeared, wanted a demonstration, a carnival show from Memory Boy. A researcher from the Johnny Carson Show, a woman named Laura Pratte, offered airfare and accommodation to Noel and his parents for a week in Burbank, California. A man from Princeton, a jittery cla.s.sics professor, offered to pay Noel to appear at a plagiarism hearing at the university to corroborate his "photographic memory." A detective sergeant from the Montreal Drug Squad asked if Noel could help in a case involving a wire tap of twins, only one of whom was guilty. A chess instructor from Chomedy offered to turn Noel into a grandmaster. And the late Manfredo Mastromonaco, on behalf of The Desert Inn in Las Vegas, offered Noel's parents $5,000 a week for an eight-week summer run on stage with a magician (Manfredo himself). "I'll turn your son into a memory bank!" Manfredo shouted into the line, more than once, hacking with cancerous laughter. It was a lot of money at the time. The phone began to ring as well. Everyone, it appeared, wanted a demonstration, a carnival show from Memory Boy. A researcher from the Johnny Carson Show, a woman named Laura Pratte, offered airfare and accommodation to Noel and his parents for a week in Burbank, California. A man from Princeton, a jittery cla.s.sics professor, offered to pay Noel to appear at a plagiarism hearing at the university to corroborate his "photographic memory." A detective sergeant from the Montreal Drug Squad asked if Noel could help in a case involving a wire tap of twins, only one of whom was guilty. A chess instructor from Chomedy offered to turn Noel into a grandmaster. And the late Manfredo Mastromonaco, on behalf of The Desert Inn in Las Vegas, offered Noel's parents $5,000 a week for an eight-week summer run on stage with a magician (Manfredo himself). "I'll turn your son into a memory bank!" Manfredo shouted into the line, more than once, hacking with cancerous laughter. It was a lot of money at the time.