Anamnesis

a vocab word relevant to today's sudden surge of hope and love of nostalgia.

Anamnesis? I hardly know Sis…

I got this vocab word from this article by Addison del Mastro, which fascinated me, as he talked both about how anamnesis happens in context of Christianity (specifically, the rite of the Eucharist), as well as the sentiment of it in context of building or rebuilding sub/urban areas. 

(Fun fact: This is how I save interesting bits from my daily readings, sometimes—from a collection of screenshots.)

It’s interesting, how he uses this term within his urbanism discourse: he talks about this term as less a general reminiscence, but more of a bringing the past into now. So it’s less of a remembrance but more of a current experiencing of the past. He describes building new structures with an old vibe as giving him feelings of anamnesis—making an old thing new again by bringing the old actively into the new.

‘...the bringing of the past into the present: the making present of a previous moment.’ 

SIDE NOTE: This was going to be a collab originally but the word hit me this week and so I wanted to go with it alone instead. Hopefully that’s okay. It was sort of basically passed along to me solo a while ago (I think?) and for some reason it had immediate resonance with my world today. Speaking of bringing the past into the present…

Hit me with your best shot

Why did this word strike me? Let me Muse and muddle about that. Hm… initially it tickled my brain that del Mastro connected the Eucharistic process with the building of new places in old places, and that set off echoes in my head, about things like why I prefer the oldy moldy service at my church with the polyphonic choir music and the almost-but-not-quite-King-James-era texts and the incense and color coded vestments and big gold crosses on sticks and when you stand and sit and kneel and… it’s the old rituals, brought into the current place, that I want in my church experience. Which, yanno—I can go ahead and read my own Book of Common Prayer and do the Jesus thing on my own, but to me it’s the old music and stained glass and rituals that put me there. Bringing the past into my present makes the rite authentic and real to me, more than a modern service would. Maybe it’s because I catch a whiff of what this Jesus guy was about, in the old words that old guys wrote a couple millennia ago, coming to life in those words aloud? Or is it more like an echo?

I’ve long had a mystical love of old stuff, even way before I was old myself: old books, as well as books that have an old flavor, like Lord of the Rings. Sherlock Holmes, other Victoriana (like fashion, and alternative aesthetics like steampunk, has always cast a patina over my tastes, and as far as acting goes, my absolute favorite is Shakespeare. I love the challenge, I love the visceral way the Elizabethan version of our language flows through the body, and it’s quite literally a therapeutic process, whether it’s deeply acting Shakespeare, or reading Bible passages as a lector in church. Fun fact: we’re doing Troilus & Cressida this evening in Covid Shakespeare Club, the Zoom reading group I’m a member of–which is both Shakespeare and ancient Greek adventure tale at once (I get to play the great warrior Hector). And, of course, my favorite type of circus has long been Renfaire. My love of court jesters and delving into their history is part of this, too–what could be more about anamnesis than an analysis of the Fool in past but also especially the present? 

This is a good illustration of anamnesis, as this shot is the conclusion to a classic modern joke, told within a Renfaire scenario. It’s the Bugs Bunny switcheroo: the Did Not/Did So trick that manifested as such and also as the Duck Season/Rabbit Season swap in one classic ep. Colorado Renfaire, 1997. Pictured: (L to R) Dane Torbenson, Tom Bottelson, Timothy Tait, and yours truly. Photog unknown.

Oldie but goodie

Even more so than the above beautiful things, I’ve long had a deep interest in folklore and ancient story. I was trained and in practice as a storyteller in my youth and teen years, and professionally engaged with that ancient art through college, until the Acting degree and then writing MFA took over my time and attention. But the oral story tradition is the common root of both my writing and performance branches of art, and I still tap into this root each day I do either. Ancient story is the best kind of living fossil, the roots of humanity, and those who go deepest into their literary (and other) arts know this well. Those of us about to embark in more LOTR readalongs could do worse than to add Tolkien’s brilliant essay, ‘On Fairy Stories,’ to the load. It’s a scaffolding and a background to the epic, almost more so than even The Silmarillion.

Anamnesis shouldn’t be confused with nostalgia: it’s an active, not a passive, word. It’s a bringing the past into the present, not just fondly missing what’s gone, or remembering, but a re-experiencing, now, actively. It’s why I like the old ritual stuff at my church, over the more modern services that are offered in the evenings–it’s not just remembering what happened, it’s invoking it, imbuing it, even ingesting it and embodying it, in the now. 

It’s an active way of being human, anamnesis is, which of course is really the only way to be human at all, isn’t it.