Nov
28
Entry One: Introduction
November 28, 2011 | 1 Comment
I first heard about the Memory Project when I was twelve. Well, probably I had heard of it before, but at age twelve it blossomed into a lifelong interest. My parents had been alive during the Fall, but they had very little to say about it. The years of political and economic instability, the calamitous lack of food and other necessary resources, followed by years of authoritarian military rule, had stripped them of any desire to share their stories. They were happy to live in a world that almost resembled the world of the past. They were happy if I grew up with no knowledge of the lost years, if I lived always looking towards the future and the boundless years of progress that were sure to come. The Fall was an aberration, a quirk in the fabric of history, and better forgotten. The Memory Project, then, was an unnecessary disruption, a remnant of the past like a thorn in their side.
So I developed my interest in secret. When I was young, the secrecy was half the fun. Every time I watched a television special or read an academic article, sifting through the information for new details, I felt as if though I was on a covert mission of great importance. I was searching, like all the others, for the Holy Grail – the location of some or all of the Memory Project records. Looking back on those years, it is surprising how little I learned. Well, not quite as surprising when you consider how little we known about something that has become one of the most long-lasting cultural phenomena of the post-Fall years, more so than the aggressively future-oriented rhetoric and policies of our current government.
To recount what we know:
The Memory Project began in the months following the event that triggered the Fall, after it became increasingly clear that the repercussions of the event would be long lasting and terrible. Researchers have placed the date of that event in late October 2012, and the origins of the Memory Project sometime between December 2012 and February 2013. It was started by a group of individuals (identities unknown, though the popular mythos identifies the creators as ordinary people who did extraordinary things under extraordinary pressures) in New York, possibly Manhattan (though that may have more to do with Manhattan’s historical importance as a cultural and artistic center, and less to do with actual factual information). The Memory Project gathered first-hand accounts of the events preceding the Fall and immediately following the Fall. There was no selection process as to which stories were gathered; anyone who wanted to write and anyone who had something to share could do so. Everything was stored in hardcopy. Digital was still too volatile a format. This is the main problem with recovering and identifying documents that belonged to the Memory Project; very few physical artifacts survived the destruction of the Fall.
I hope to use this blog to record my current research about the Project and as a place to compile useful information for fellow researchers.
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