the aggregations of memory

When you are not acting like yourself . . .that's an everyday thing for everyone, but it can be a bit sinister . . .It's like the opposite of Unite

We remember by rebuilding the past. Aggregating fragments of feeling and sensation. Images, words, intensities. The past is already distributed and we have no choice but to engage in acts of forensic reconstruction. Our lifestreams are more like a delta (the Mississippi or the Mekong) than a river.

Burial's music may not mean that much to you if you've never heard 2step or jungle. For me it feels sodden in longing for musics that eschewed the retro pleasures of the past. A paradox of futurist nostalgia. He's assembled elements of the past (beats, vocals) that feel dislocated - undead divas, a gnostic rave severed from the flesh.

Burial provides clues for the future of memory. Memories has always been tied to things in the world - landscapes, artifacts, people. And we've struggled to create collective memories that will outlast our little lives: of myths & stories, of sacred places, of uniting events, of books & machines. The digital traces of our lives (that so vex us in terms of control & privacy) are part of that stew. They will be subject to interpretation & reinterpretation - not always in a manner constructive or positive.

Perhaps someone else will reconstruct my life from its myriad traces. Creating nostalgia for an identity who never existed.