The Stories Behind the Stories

The Flow of Memories

When I wrote Memories Are Made of This, I thought I was writing down stories about things that had happened to me.

It turned out to be slightly more complicated than that. Every story has another story hiding behind it. Sometimes it is the part I remembered years later. Sometimes it is something that happened before the event itself. And sometimes it is the completely unexpected detail that, at the time, seemed unimportant but somehow stayed in my memory. That is what I mean by the stories behind the stories.

Take one of the stories in the book and, on the surface, it might simply be about something that happened on a particular day. But what brought me to that day in the first place? Who was I with? What was happening in my life at the time? What did I believe then that I no longer believe now?

Those questions can change the story quite considerably. I discovered this while writing the book.

I would start writing about an event I remembered clearly enough. Then another memory would appear. That would lead to another one. Before long, I had wandered several years backwards or forwards and was wondering how I had ended up writing about something completely different.

Memory has a rather untidy filing system. There were also stories I had almost forgotten. A photograph, a place name, an old conversation or even a particular smell could bring something back. And once it returned, I sometimes found myself remembering details that I hadn't thought about for decades.

The strange thing is that we don't always remember the biggest events best. Sometimes it is the small things. A conversation in a car. A particular house. Someone's expression. The sound of a door closing. Something funny that happened when nobody else thought it was particularly funny. Those little details can sit quietly in your memory for years before suddenly deciding to make themselves useful.

And then there are the stories that change as you get older. When something happens to you at twenty, you see it from the perspective of a twenty-year-old. Forty years later, you have rather more information to work with. You know what happened afterwards.

You understand people differently. You recognise opportunities you didn't recognise at the time. You also recognise mistakes. That doesn't necessarily mean that the older version of the story is the correct one. It is simply another perspective. This became one of the most interesting parts of writing my memoir. I wasn't just remembering what happened. I was discovering who I was when it happened.

Growing up in South Africa after leaving Australia as an eight-year-old. Moving between countries and cultures. The people I met. The jobs I did. The adventures, the disasters, the lucky breaks and the occasions when I managed to make life considerably more complicated than it needed to be.

Each experience became a small part of a much bigger story. And there is another thing I discovered.

A story doesn't necessarily belong entirely to the person telling it. The people who appear in our lives become part of our stories too. Sometimes they influence us for years without ever knowing it. A teacher, a colleague, a stranger we met briefly, or a friend we haven't seen for decades can leave a mark. They may have completely forgotten the incident. I haven't.

That is probably why I wanted to write these stories down. Not because I think my life has been extraordinary in every respect. It hasn't. It is simply that when you start looking back over six decades, you realise that an awful lot has happened. Some of it was planned. Much of it wasn't. And quite a lot of it only makes sense when you look backwards.

The stories in Memories Are Made of This are therefore not just stories about what happened. They are stories about how I got there, what happened afterwards, and what I remember now. Those are the stories behind the stories. And, in many ways, they are the ones I find most interesting.

That’s all for now.

Chat again soon,

Greg.