Concrete Pencil: Lest We Forget

And fair enough. But ask not for whom the whatever tolls, it tolls for, you know, you as well.

Memory loss, presumably, occurs increasingly as one ages, and we're all doing that. 

Now, naturally enough I've always considered myself a young man, and presumed that I would always remain so. But just recently I've started to notice there are things that should normally be in front-of-brain that have just gone.

And I'm starting to think that this might be the start. The start of, you know, degeneration.

I'm 32. I stopped growing seven years ago. Or eight.

Those eight years, are we to believe, were my actual life? From now on death comes?
Seriously, I'm going to have to look up his name in my iPod. And that's cheating. That means I can't actually remember his name. That song's been on my Desert Island Disc list, like, 20 times. This means, my brain is dying. 

(Hypochondriac is a word I've always been able to remember. Unlike, ironically, articulate. I always have to have a way to remind myself of that. Like the lorry. Articulated.)

This is, I feel, particularly worrying for me because I've always been the one who remembers stuff: in my family, in my group of friends, in my marriage, I recall. That's what I do.

Not dates, as such. I can't tell you, without looking it up, what happened in the summer of 2000 (er, euros? Where was I?).

Nor lyrics, which I've always found annoyingly hard to commit to memory. But real words. The words people say. Conversations people have. I remember every beat, every last word.

I remember walking down the seafront to college in Swansea listening to Five Live on my headphones and Nicky Campbell doing his teasingly topical chart challenge and boasting that he got a first in history at Aberdeen University. Why can I remember that and not the name of this singer?

Forgetting is, we should all remember, tremendously important. If we all remembered everything, our brains wouldn't work, they would have no focus. In IT terms, we all have to clear our caches every now and then. And maybe that's why I can't remember that man. Because lately I have been remembering seemingly random moments. 

On a ferry on a press trip in Croatia, opening my cabin door. The canal in Surrey Quays on a summer day. Maybe these odd recalls are pushing things I thought I knew out of my mind. 

It's no good. I'm going to have to look him up. How will I know it's him when I see his name? How do I remember that?

There he is: Elliott Smith, Elliott Smith, Elliott Smith. Lest we forget.