The Allure of Books

- I like books - too much really, since I have little space to store them in and, once acquired, I hate to get rid of them.  One old book I bought for frivolous reasons around fifteen years ago (from a used book store) recently resurfaced.  Its title is in gold letters on a black background and the title is "The Lyle Official Arts Review - 1978".  "Lyle" in the title caught my attention, and since the book is full of (black and white) pictures of old paintings that were auctioned in 1977, I thought it would be interesting to look through.  I've never spent more than a few minutes at a time actually doing so, but recently it occurred to me that it might be interesting to write about the book and its (not very logical really) allure for me.  The first and last paragraphs of the introduction are as follows:

- "Here is the fourth edition of the Lyle Official Arts Review.  Beside details of many thousands of oil paintings, watercolors, drawings and prints, this, the fourth edition of the Lyle Official Arts Review contains over 2,000 illustrations of selected pictures ranging in value from ￡1 to ￡1,000,000.  These values are computed from auction results gathered over the past year and include, in addition to sales conducted in Britain, a broadly representative selection from some of the major European salerooms."
- [.............. several pages ..............]
- "The picture market is as strong as it ever was.  The dearth of important works has caused the attention of buyers to be drawn to what is available but in general sanity has governed bidding.  Nevertheless, at the lower end of the market yesterday's unconsidered trifles have become today's prizes and I am sure that the tares of today will become tomorrow's wheat."
- One of the things I like about printed books is how each book is a static piece of history.  With electronic text on websites, you never know when it's going to change or disappear.  A printed book though, contains exactly the same information it did on the day the pages came off the printing presses and were bound into book form.
- Back to why I bought it though.  There was "Lyle" in the title, but also the year 1978.  I was (obviously) quite a bit younger then, and holding the book in my hands, I think back to 1978... so much has happened since then.  I wonder how much of it I've forgotten....  I didn't use to wonder how much of my past I've forgotten, but reviewing the video footage of Tokyo I took from 1990-93 over the past twelve years has very clearly highlighted the extent of my memory of that period.  I recorded things so extensively (especially in 1990 and 1991), that even after twelve years of going through the material (as I find time) there is still more.  From the experience of going back and forth between present time and 1990-93, it seems to me that there are four categories of memories:
- Things I remember/remembered clearly as they are recorded on tape (with no change before or after seeing the material again).
- Things I had forgotten about, but quickly remembered soon after seeing them on the screen.
- Things I didn't initially remember when seeing them again on the screen, but that come back after thinking about them for awhile.
- Some things that I don't remember, ever after seeing them.  These are few, but still it's quite strange to see video you took yourself and so know you saw/experienced what you're watching, and yet don't recall the time... even when seeing it again.
- The thing about the videos overall that I find fascinating is how they highlight how memory works.  I experienced the entire "bubble economy" years, and so I believed I remembered them accurately, but over the 17 years my recorded material from that time slept in boxes, I saw a number of TV dramas and movies with (newly made) scenes depicting those years.  Initially, I remember thinking "That's not exactly how it was..." but after seeing a number of such fictional accounts of the time, they colored my memories.  Since memory isn't read-only, but rather recall, and then overwrite-save, it seems that in recalling my memories from 1990 while watching inaccurate fictional accounts of 1990 on TV, the two became mixed in the new version overwrite-saved to memory....
- That's the bad news.  The good news is that once I started revisited 1990-93 via video time machine in 2007, the accurate version quickly came back to me, which seems to suggest that while easy-recall memories are easily corrupted, on a deeper level, an accurate version of things is recorded in the deep reaches of the mind somewhere....
- So how about the years from 1978 to 1990?  I wish I had video material from those years as well, although I suppose it would be pointless as there wouldn't be time to review it all in my lifetime.  It's a really difficult balance - living your life and also having some concept of historical things.  It's hard enough remembering your own life in detail, so I suppose it's little wonder that people forget the lessons of history.  The record is there, but how much time is there to review it?  Still, it mustn't be ignored!  There is much to learn from history.

Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
youtube.com/lylehsaxon
lylehsaxon.blogspot.jp/
lookback1997.blogspot.jp/