06 November 2006

IN WHAT WAY COULD "REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST" BE IMPORTANT FOR AlzheimUr?


In Proust’s novel, Remembrance of Things Past, the primary act of experiencing the environment and absorbing those thoughts in one's memory creates a play of recognition. Only by experiencing, one can remember things past; as Proust wrote "reality takes shape in the memory alone."1 Corporeal and incorporeal substances evoke man's memory as man takes notice of his environment.
Remembering the things past in the context of Murcia, not merely folkloric traditions or even the blue of the Mediterranean Sea come to mind. Experiences associated to the way the fragrance of the orange blossom fills the air, the orange sunlight embracing the mountains in the afternoons, the hot breeze stroking one’s cheeks in the midnight summers, the peculiar grey colour and texture of the olive tree, the different typologies of patios offering shades as the day goes by or even the people taking their chairs to the street in order to converse with their neighbours reach as deep into the memory.
They are impressions of a sensitive relationship between the subject and the object. In terms of the design of AlzheimUr CENTRE, it could therefore be argued that creativity is influenced by the dialectical relationship between two opposite aspects of memory. That is, what creates the new is the relationship between conscious and subconscious 'nutrition' already consumed by experience. In the new lays the ghost of ancestral memories, of preservation and reflection. An elaboration of already existing things continues to exist within us and establishes a tradition.

1. Proust M. (1982) Remembrance of Things Past, Volume 1, Swann's Way, Within a Bidding Grove. Vintage Books, New York, p. 201.

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