(Taken from a longer lecture at Pullen Art Center, 2005)

            Memory fascinates me. In 2000, Random House published my second book about Alzheimer’s. Like the first, it was written in order to make sense of the loss of my mother’s memory and the shocking loss our family experienced when each of our own childhood memories disappeared from her life.
            Memory is a human gift we have of preserving what we see and feel. It allows us to share what we experience and make connections with the world and the people around us. Memory is the thread that binds us to one another. Through memory we learn to love, to trust, to share. If soul is what makes us human, then perhaps memory is the thing that helps make us humane.
            One of the things I learned from living with Alzheimer’s is that memory is a fundamental part of the everyday of our lives. We need to remember.
            If we don’t remember the answers to the questions, we fail the test. If we don’t remember the way home, we can get lost. If we don’t remember to take the cake out of the oven it will get burnt. If we don’t remember the faces of the ones we love and who love us, we become disconnected from our lives and the world around us. If we don’t or can’t remember, we have no past, no present, and no future. We are disconnected and all alone.             Twelve years ago when I first began doing research about Alzheimer’s there were numerous wild theories flying about regarding the cause of the disease, from aluminum in pots and pans to deodorant use and fatty foods. One of the more far flung of the theories was that our parents and grandparents were experiencing Alzheimer’s because they had lived and fought in World War II and had seen so many horrible things, including the dropping of the atomic bomb, that they developed the disease in order to forget.
            With 911, Columbine, Terry Schiavo, the Tsunami, two Gulf Wars, Apartheid, AIDS, Biafra, Beslan, and every other tragedy we’ve witnessed in the past few years, what chance do we have of not developing Alzheimer’s? How will we remember?
            Artists and writers have always served as scribes for humanity. They put down in lines and colors, words and songs, those things they see and feel. When we write a story, draw a picture, play music, sing a song, dance, throw a pot, we are engaging in an act of memory. It can be the memory of a face we once saw, or how we felt when we saw the bright noonday sun cut through a grove of trees in a park, or the horrors we feel regarding the terrorism and war we have witnessed and never want to see repeated again.
            Basically, we want to remember. We need to remember. Memories make us happy. They can also make us sad. But whether happy or sad, memories connect us. That is why we tell stories when we sit at our kitchen tables, why we take pictures when we travel, why we send emails to our friends when we read something that moves us. We want to connect. We want our memories to mean something. We don’t want them to be lost. Because, in some very fundamental way we understand that if our memories are lost, we are lost.
            One of the most curious things about Alzheimer’s is that when an Alzheimer’s victim has lost most of their memories and nearly all their language, if they hear a song that has some strong memory attached to it, whether it is the singing of the hymn Amazing Grace or The Old Rugged Cross, or even a song they once danced to with someone they loved, they can recall and call back every word of the lyrics and can sing. When they sing, their faces are no longer blank and flat, but filled with memory in a way that can break your heart, for when the music is gone, the words and the memories are gone, as well, and you know they have flown away like so many other memories and are forgotten once again.
            Some researchers have suggested we can stem the tide of Alzheimer’s by doing crossword puzzles and reading books…keeping active mentally.
            I believe we should make art. I think we should take a some time every day to pinch a pot, take a picture, write a poem, arrange a vase of flowers, bake a beautiful cake, sing a song, dance, do anything to make a little art that says, “this is what I see, this is what I feel, this is what I want to remember this day.

            “This is what I want you to remember about me.”
                                                                        --Carrie Knowles, 2005