The Art of Leisure
I could build me a castle of memories
Just to have somewhere to go
Count the days and the nights that it takes
To get back in the saddle again
Feed the pigeons some clay, turn the night into day
And start talkin' again when I know what to say
— Blaze Foley, “Clay Pigeons”
Think about memory. Kind of a funny statement, that. Many would say that “thought” and “memory” are synonymous. Thoughts often involve memories, experiences, or even prior thoughts; they rely on one another, like lengths of chain, built up over a lifetime. Sometimes, the links of the chain become forgotten; progenitors buried, but progenitors none the less.
Lately, I've been thinking a lot about memory. I've always had a difficult time with remembering. Not the kind of remembering that helps you with school: facts, equations, theories. I've always (luckily) been blessed in that realm, being able to easily commit matters of fact to memory. It's with my own memories, the memories of childhood, of influential moments, of life, that seem to slip through my hands—like grasping at something refracted beneath the water. They are there, they exist, but they are untenable. If one asked me to conjure up memories of important moments in my life, or of treasured times, I would struggle. But sometimes they come to me, inadvertently, catalyzed by seemingly random and unrelated senses.
It's long been thought that smell is one of the most potent triggers of memory. Here's what I found for a biological explanation:
Scents bypass the thalamus and go straight to the brain's smell center, known as the olfactory bulb. The olfactory bulb is directly connected to the amygdala and hippocampus, which might explain why the smell of something can immediately trigger a detailed memory or even intense emotion. (https://www.discovery.com/science/Why-Smells-Trigger-Such-Vivid-Memories)
Often these sense-triggered memories come from things from our childhood: a perfume our grandmother used to wear, a tea our mother drank, a certain home-cooked meal one used to have, etc.
I find these non-consensual memories intriguing. In many ways, our minds (used in the sense of consciousness) do not consent to our bodies—its functions. This is particularly so with memory (What is PTSD if not an nonconsensual assault on the mind by the faculties of the body). Surely, a materialist would engage in psychoanalysis here, but that's not what interests me with regards to this phenomenon. What I find beguiling, is that these sense-memories are often full bodied, vivid, so that we almost experience them again as if they were events of the present and not the past. In a sense, it feels like a bridge has been opened, superimposing time to inject life back into what was lost.
What specifically sparked my interest in the subject was Cynthia Cruz's The Melancholia of Class, particularly the section where she discusses the concept of "leisure". Leisure, as defined by Cruz, is "time to waste, time to do nothing." (Cruz, 29). It is within these passages about leisure that Cruz mentions Proust.
Marcel Proust was a 19th-20th century French novelist whose notable works include In Search of Lost Time, Swann's Way, Sodom and Gomorrah, and The Fugitive. He is hailed as one of the most influential writers of the 20th century, and In Search of Time is often credited as his magnum opus.
I've never read Proust, but Cruz's descriptions of his theories about sense-memories intrigued me. Cruz, quoting Walter Benjamin, states that Proust "was never able to recall his childhood by force of will. Instead […] when eating a madeleine, he was flooded by memories of his upbringing" (Cruz, 30).
According to Benjamin, these "involuntary memories" are crucial to the writer, as they are the means in which a story comes alive: "Without mémoire involontaire, the work is flat, the writing like that found in newspapers" (Cruz, 30).
The way Cruz ties these involuntary memories (also sometimes called "Proustian memory" or "madeleine moments") to class, is through leisure. Benjamin theorizes that involuntary memory, these madeleine moments, tend to only be triggered when one's mind is completely unoccupied; in other words, when one has time to "zone-out", or dissociate into a monotonous or unvaried activity. This relates to class because leisure is a privilege. To have time to do nothing, is a privilege: "The ability to do nothing is a luxury, and one not intended for the working class" (Cruz, 31).
Leisure pertains not just to the body either. Leisure is having ease of mind; to be able to sit and not have racing thoughts and worries and stresses—to be able to daydream. Neoliberalism instills a deep guilt regarding down-time, a guilt that makes us think we should be doing something else, something productive. It often makes one feel a deep sense of shame for solely existing, even for just a few moments.
Furthermore, to be able to navigate the world easily, is a form of leisure. "Growing up absorbed in art and having natural access to cultural currency gives one a sense of ease" (Cruz, 34).
Without the mental down-time that leisure entails, there is less likelihood of having "madeleine moments", the lifeblood of storytellers. Benjamin calls this lack of leisure existence "day-to-day-goal-oriented living", the likes of which Proust tried to avoid by shifting his work into the night, where the activities and responsibilities of the day could not interfere with his involuntary memory.
The capacity for art and its relation to privilege is nothing new. Most of the greatest thinkers in our colonial historical canon were able to generate their works because they were afforded the luxury of doing nothing but surrounding themselves with thought, and having the social class to be at the nexus of intellectual society. This is not always the case, however, as there are many great works produced by the poor and working class. The difference, in my opinion, is that these artists are rarely discovered nor praised in their lifetimes, due to disparity of opportunity. Famously, Kafka's works were published against his dying wishes, his fame only acquired posthumously. Thankfully, this trend is changing, the inclusion of marginalized voices finally rising.
I believe there is something of merit to the argument that art requires memory, particularly the powerful memories that are often only accessible to a slackened, permeable mind.
One might reasonably rebuttal that many great works of fiction do not come from personal experience. To that I would say that even the most speculative of fiction involves relatable experiences to the reader; the emotions and memories of these experiences instilled in the work by the author. It is just as Descartes says about dreams in the first meditation:
Suppose then that I am dreaming—it isn’t true that I, with my eyes open, am moving my head and stretching out my hands. Suppose, indeed that I don’t even have hands or anybody at all. Still, it has to be admitted that the visions that come in sleep are like paintings: they must have been made as copies of real things; so at least these general kinds of things—eyes, head, hands and the body as a whole—must be real and not imaginary.
Cruz makes a point later in her book that I believe provides some pertinent insight into the matter. Quoting Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception, she states that
[…] the phantom limb serves as the depository of memory: 'The memories called up before the patient induce in him a phantom limb, not as an image associationism summons another image, but because any memory reopens time lost to us and invites us to recapture the situation evoked.’ (Cruz, 139)
The phenomena of phantom limbs is another example of a non-consensual assault on the mind by the body. The phantom limb is a memory, the negation of which only serves to affirm its existence. It is a haunting, a foregone reality superimposed with the present—a living memory. Involuntary memories (madeleine moments) are temporal resurrections—ripe, living things begging to be preserved, kept alive, in art.
We pull inspiration from memory, from experience. Biblically, "inspiration" means to breathe in, to inspire. Inspiration is breath—spirit. Memory is the spirit underneath art, the spectre, the well which gets drawn from.
When writer's say to "write what you know", they aren't implying to never write about things you've never experienced. Instead, they are talking about humane things: emotions, feelings, memories—the viscera of stories. As Hemingway said: "It is easy to write. Just sit in front of your typewriter and bleed."
So, the next time you’re feeling guilty about day dreaming, just remember Proust, and imagine yourself opening up to the spirit of the life.
Cruz, Cynthia. The Melancholia of Class A Manifesto for the Working Class. Watkins Media, 2021.
Descartes, Rene. 2008. Meditations on First Philosophy. Translated by Michael Moriarty. Oxford World’s Classics. London, England: Oxford University Press.