31 Days, 31 Memories - Recap.

[bironic]

The Memoryfest Rundown

Things I have learned during this project:

- Posts about sexy high school teachers get more comments than posts about sexy German actors.
- Danish schools don't make children cut along dotted lines in one unbroken series of snips.
- michelle_nine is getting married!
- We all have a hell of a lot in common, even if the details differ.

Things I have not learned during this project:

- How not to talk about myself all the time
- What is a baby turkey called?

Some random things we have discussed:

- The liberating effect of prosthetic noses on professional actors
- The ability of children to preserve social caste systems even with school uniforms
- The joy of dissecting and eating animals
- The importance of imagination in our lives and our amazement at people who don't understand that
- Near-death experiences and recollections of grief
- The spectrum of teachers and mentors
- The brilliant casting of David Bowie as Andy Warhol in "Basquiat"
- If geography or culture dictates whether you judge people based on nation, religion or ethnicity; if an assimilated group is ever really assimilated; and whether a religion needs a country of its own to be trusted

Some not-so-random things we have discussed:

- The magnification of emotion we experience and the simplification of language we use when recalling an early memory
- The differences and similarities of dream-memory and real-memory
- The strong connection of music and memory (here and here)

Miscellaneous profundity:

- "Not everything in the imaginary world is imagined."
- "Life is more fun with a little magic, whatever form we may see it in."

Memoryfest Prizes:

Perfect Attendance: kabale
Most Beautifully-Written Contributions: pynelyf
Best Post on Non-Recollections: synn
Strongest Comeback: catilinarian
Wackiest Comments: michelle_nine
Most Erudite Quoting of Secondary Sources: maddy_harrigan
Most Deserving of a Nepotism Award: musicisbelievng
Best One-time-only Appearance: crazypalefreak


Seriously, though, I've enjoyed this month enormously, and I hope you have too. It's hard to say what I liked best: learning these private, personal things about each of you; exploring storytelling in this straightforward style, both for the way in which the memories shaped themselves into stories and for the reactions, both expected and unexpected, they brought out in us when we read them; the connection to the past that sprang up again and again as I chose and wrote about these memories; or the alternately silly and thought-provoking diversions we found ourselves in along the way.

Comments

[crazypalefreak.livejournal.com]

Oh I feel bad for only commenting once :( I did read all the ones you posted since I friended you. I'll go back and read all the previous ones eventually, I promise...

[bironic.livejournal.com]

No worries! I wanted to pay tribute to everyone who participated, even tongue-in-cheek.

[crazypalefreak.livejournal.com]

Oh BTW. I've been meaning to draw your attention to this (http://crazypalefreak.livejournal.com/7907.html) for a while. Funny how things turn out, eh? I wrote that a month before I ever met you!

[bironic.livejournal.com]

Ha! I hope the way the paper turned out, with its relatively low emphasis on slash after all, didn't disappoint too much.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

Glad to be of service. :)