Arisa Purkpong

There are moments that have inexplicably inscribed themselves in my memory. Every now and then I open the door to them. I stretch them out. So far that they reach into the present. They are a home to me. These moments are subtle ones. Not what you expect. Just totally normal, totally banal. Insignificant. They actually seem to be of no great importance. And yet I am afraid of losing them. I don’t want them to die. Or, rather, I don’t want them to die within me before I do. For if I go and they come with me, that’s okay – for me, at least. Yes, I know, not for you. But even with the greatest effort, I couldn’t make you understand what a memory makes me feel. Words also frustrate me. And a story only works when you press it into a shape and submit it to a dramaturgy. But by cultivating it, I would also domesticate it. The works, in all their wild complexity, would then be subordinated to a structural logic. For you, my memory would become static, since you would not follow the daily updates I apply to it. Ultimately, you might end up taking it for truth. Perhaps you would trust in it. The testimony that is bound to it would be a solid entity for you. But it is not meant to be that. I ask you to internalize the idea that memories work within us. Do not forget that they do so. Do not set them down in stone – and with them, neither you nor me. Nor us.

But in order that my memories remain alive, I want to keep them private, as the core of my intimacy with myself. You will create your own, open narrative. And in it will also be the intangible shadows of those memories I never told you about.