“Finally, it is also that blessedness of will-less perception which spreads so wonderful a charm over the past and the distant, and by a self-deception presents them to us in so flattering a light. For by our conjuring up in our minds days long past spent in a distant place, it is the only objects recalled by our imagination, not the subject of will that carried around its incurable sorrows with it just as much then as it does now”(138).
This excerpt from Schopenhauer's "The Artist and the Sublime" struck me as a fairly peculiar take on the subject of memory and its relation to beauty and truth. While often we see a negative critique of the persistence of memory and the polishing effects nostalgia imposes on our experiences Schopenhauer seems take an opposite stance on the process of memory. Though memory adorns past experiences with falsehood and self-deception Schopenhauer claims that at the same time has a stripping effect on the subject of our recollection and only the Idea remains. We all have had the experience of connecting certain songs with moments time and events in our life. One song which I think may be subject to this stripping effect for me is Blind Melon's "No Rain". This was my first favorite song. I can remember how my brother and I would go across the street to our neighbor's, Tim and John, house and play co-op "Diddy Kong" on Super Nintendo and listen it on repeat for hours. Looking back I cannot remember conversations I had with them or my brother at the time or very many other activities we did together besides play "Mortal Kombat", "Independence Day", or whatever action movie had come out that week in our yards(both back and front), but listening to this song seems to capture and embody the truth of those moments without the adornment of details. The song simply feels like the joy of being 5 or 6 or 7 to me. It evokes in me that special knowledge and perspective that only kids have though I can no longer hope to articulate it merely experience, it reflect on it.
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