FLY memory — what remains in our memory storage?
Think about your life as a finite sequence of events, there is the moment of birth that nobody remembers, there is the moment when the spirit leaves the body which is unmemorable either and in between there are on average 1000 months that seem to last forever.
The question is what do we remember? What we carry with us in our lives? And what in our body-brain mechanism determines the curation of what will be in and what event would be excluded. The human capability to remember is wider beyond imagination, it is like scanning all the books in the national libraries in Washington D.C., Tokyo, Delhi and Jerusalem together and storing them in 1 Kg processing storage machine, it sounds enormous but even what seems infinite storage space can’t store all what we see and feel through all our lives. The human eye is equivalent to 500 MP camera and is like shooting 60 photos per minute, think how much storage is needed for only one day in each human life. Most of the images are deleted, most of the days are not remembered, most of the doings, feelings and daily activities are like a comet or a one-night stand that right after disappear forever; so we are back to the question what remains? What determines the opening of the memory lanes and what shuts them down?
During the war in Lebanon I was a platoon commander in a force that fought with Syrian troops in the Beqaa valley near Lake Qaraoun. At 4 AM we got an order to move toward Beirut which meant crossing the country. We began our division movement to the east at sunrise, then all the long convoy stopped. I was in the first troop, close to the reconnaissance unit that navigated the division. I moved to the head of the convoy and saw something which I will never forget, the reconnaissance unit commander was standing in the middle of the road — the tank of the division commander was in front of him with seven beautiful flowers behind him. The young officer didn’t let the tanks pass over the flowers, claiming they are rare, near extinction flowers and he asked all the convoy to make a small detour to the left,
The division commander shouted that this is war and this crazy behavior would bring him (the reconnaissance unit commander) to jail. What the fuck are you and your mother doing? He shouted (In Hebrew it sounds even worse). The young officer stood still. Two soldiers from the division commander tank came out of the tank and tried to push him but then all the reconnaissance unit were there to support their commander. Then something unbelievable happened, the tank backed four meters, took the suggested detou; the reconnaissance unit moved to the front leaving its commander near the flowers. He stayed there till the last vehicle passed him then returned to the head of the convoy.
War is a time with extreme experiences, friends are wounded and killed, life is in constant danger, there are moments of horror and glory, I forgot most of them, but this scene of a young officer confronting a division commander in a time of was to protect flowers will never be erased from my memory.
I wrote this story to mark the first clear curator for remembering — outstanding, unusual and different experiences and feelings, it’s actually anything we pay heightened attention to usually with more than one sense. We won’t remember the routine, or daily life, but what is extraordinary is engraved in our system as emotional memory. I wouldn’t have remembered a quarrel between a division commander and a reconnaissance unit commander about the right path; however, the unusual cause and the firm stand this reconnaissance unit commander took made the situation unique and powerful. In the last days of the war, both officers, the division commander and the reconnaissance unit commander, were wounded and they ended up in the same room at Rambam hospital in Haifa. The division commander’s wife came to visit her husband with a huge bunch of flowers, “Give them to this guy.” He pointed at the reconnaissance unit commander’s bed, “This guy loves flowers”.
Most people prefer certainty on uncertainty — the comfort zone over the risks, knowing in advance about vagueness. The truth is that knowing, comfort zone and certainty are poor memory suppliers. Risks on the other hand are a good shoot to be recorded.
Every move that leads to change has a risk — moving house, finding a new job or trying to be a chef after working as a programmer. All those actions need to be decided, agreed upon and activated. Dating, for example, is a great risk area; there are many that give up — women and men. “I won’t find the one,” they say, “so, why hear the same stories again and again”.
There is a great sadness attached to this attitude. What is really inspiring in life comes from stretching the borders, this is where FLY comes into the picture. FLY stands for Free the Life within You and when a reporter asked me in an interview what is the essence of FLY, I said, “Stretching the borders without war”. This is my definition of art, stretching the borders or letting our brain encompass the world in a different way.
FLY is about expressing oneself with no borders, limitations, inhibitions or right and wrongs. Take a canvas, mix live flowing colors, make another layer, be happy, that’s it, no small letters.
I seek people with a lot of memories. They are alive; they took risks; they tried; sometimes they failed but sometimes they won big time and the biggest winner is a human being with a rich arsenal of personal memories and stories. Richer is the kind of person that can transmit it to his close family; richest is the one that can share it with the entire world.
I always say to artists attending my workshops that the best is to learn to say YES, because if you say NO the situation remains the same. So, do extraordinary things. Even if you are 80 it’s not too late to learn to paint or travel to Kathmandu.
Free the Life within You is not a suggestion, it’s a must if we are going to grasp the fact that this is the only life we are going to have within our physical body.
