It’s finally coat season, which means I have had to face the task of excavating my pockets. I use my coat pockets like a portable bin — miscellaneous items of rubbish just accumulate in them somehow. It’s not something I’m proud of, but it is what it is. Generally the rubbish remains there until it begins compromising the elegant outline of the coat and I am forced to address the issue.
What this means is that my coat pockets are repositories of ancient relics, stuffed with archaeological evidence of the person I was last coat season. I often find that this person is a mystery to me. What, for example, could have been going through her mind when she pocketed one single, lonely sock? What is ‘Biod Seb Sm Fm Gl’ and why, as evidenced by this faded receipt, did she buy it? Where and why did she acquire this curious unidentified thing that may or may not be a small piece of tree?
It’s like seeing candid snapshots of yourself. They catch you unawares, offer you a surprise glimpse of your life from the outside. Some paint a flattering picture, like the Paris metro ticket or the shopping list with nothing on it but vegetables. What a sophisticated, well-travelled eater of produce this person must have been!
But then you get to the used plaster and the piece of chewed gum, which cannot be evidence of anything but a disgusting character flaw. Nevertheless, in archaeological terms, they still have value. I don’t remember what I did to myself to necessitate that plaster, or what the chewing gum tasted like even though it was ‘pine’ flavour and should therefore have been fairly noteworthy. (It was French.) As far as my memory is concerned, these little life non-events never happened at all — and yet here in my pocket is the irrefutable proof that they did.
In one of the pockets was an opera ticket, which I think was there because I’d been intending to keep it as a souvenir. The word ‘souvenir’ is like Paris metro tickets and pine-flavour chewing gum, which is to say French. In French it means a memory. The English meaning is narrower: a souvenir is a physical memory, an object that prompts us to remember. It’s a memory we’ve outsourced, basically. You keep a souvenir because you don’t trust your brain to do the work of remembering on its own.
I went to this opera because a friend of mine was the assistant conductor, so he got me a free ticket and told me some of the backstage gossip, like the fact that the singers playing the central (doomed) couple were also a couple in real life. This was not as romantic as it sounded, because one of them was really nice and the other one really wasn’t and it was a mystery to everyone why they were together. I missed the final of the Eurovision song contest to be there, by the way, which just goes to show what a good friend I am. I had to avoid social media and the news all evening and also warn people against sending me spoilers, so that my conductor friend and I could watch it on catch-up the next day and be surprised when Sweden won again.1
All of which is to say that I don’t need to outsource this particular memory to a souvenir. My brain is doing a fine job. I suspect this is often the case: if it seems significant enough that a souvenir ought to be kept, you probably don’t need one. Insignificant, ultra-forgettable events, on the other hand, can be partially revivified by being externally preserved. In order to externally preserve them you have to keep unintentional souvenirs by making what is commonly known as ‘mess’.
Digital mess also works. All that crap in your screengrabs folder and your downloads folder and your cloud storage photo album from 2015 — what TREASURES you could find if you delved in. I’m sure that when I’m old I’ll enjoy looking at pictures of my younger self posing in my gladrags at important life events, but I think I’ll enjoy the little time capsule photos better, the forgotten moments fossilised in pixels. Just now I scrolled through some of the digital detritus on my phone and discovered that I once put together a dossier of evidence for the uncanny resemblance between Damiano David of the 2021 Eurovision victory and Kristin Scott Thomas in Four Weddings and a Funeral, and also that I have in my life made a cake with candied courgettes on top. Candied courgettes! It’s a magical mystery tour, encountering this person you have forgotten ever being.
I think it’s the same mechanism at work when some historic graffiti by Anonymous gets you in the solar plexus but an official portrait of Sir Lord Baron His Royal Importantness does not. It’s in the mess and the detritus that the past lives on. And yet people don’t like mess, as a rule. Recently, in the building where I live, somebody scratched a very detailed cock and balls into the wall of the lift and signed it ‘Mr Cock’. We have a building Whatsapp group, and when I tell you people did not approve! They were so upset. They wanted to check CCTV to find the culprit and bring them to justice. Obviously none of them were thinking about the distant future after we are all dead, when the cock and balls may be all that remains of our tenure on this planet, and our descendants will find it on a scrap metal heap somewhere and be beside themselves with delight. The ancient Romans drew penis graffiti too. Is there anything more humanising than that? They spoke Latin, wore togas and made animal sacrifices to their pagan gods, but they still scratched willies into the walls of the bathhouse.
So there you have it. Mess is good. Don’t show this to your teenage children.
‘Til next time,
Kx
If you are reading this from America, are unfamiliar with Eurovision, and like fun, please just watch it. Apparently it is possible to do so in North America now. All you need is a TV, some wine and a couple of friends. I promise you won’t regret it.
I loved this. It’s something I think about a lot. Beautifully expressed. Thank you.