The elusiveness of memory on the Greek island of Symi.

A trip down memory lane - or was it a track?

Jennfer Egan’s new novel, which I’ve recently finished but had to google the title (The Candy House apparently) tackles the fascinating idea of downloading our memories, so that we might fully access them. It’s the possibility of truly getting to know ourselves, of seeing ourselves in the world through which we’ve passed. It’s the opportunity to recall all that we’ve forgotten. And boy, let’s face it, that’s a lot, because for all the urging that humans would benefit from living in the Now, we seem to live in an ever-moving window of approximately a fortnight. We are what we’re said/done/thought/felt over the preceding two weeks, the rest seemingly banked away in some inaccessible vault of memories.

That’s not to say we don’t recall things. The impact of our first kiss or Luc Besson film or driving lesson prevail forever. Yet all those fascinating or amusing things we’ve said, that we sailed beneath for a while are forgotten, alongside all the social clangers and lonely nights and furious arguments and gentle words. We more easily recall the novel, which explains our pursuit of fresh experiences. And as to Egan’s novel, well, she neglects her intriguing premise halfway through that no amount of elegant prose can prevent the reader from wandering off like they might an elderly relative who has put themselves to sleep during a droning anecdote.

I recently revisited the Greek island of Symi. I once spent a month on the island working on a novel that I assumed might spark the world alight. I found a cheap room at the top of the island. The steps growing less worn smooth as I climbed to the summit of the island, where the lonely artist might overlook the red roofs, pastel villas and snoozing cats. The ships tied in the harbour appeared like motionless toys and the blue sky arched overhead like a soporific narcotic. I recall the same pasta dish I cooked nightly before descending to the genteel nightlife on an island happy to purr its heyday into the ears of day-trippers obliged to buy a sponge or fridge magnet.

Looking back I didn’t even know where I was – Turkey is visible from the seafront, not that I knew it at the time – which meant any ideas I had of thoroughly dismantling the concept of the novel (yeah right) were in hindsight deeply misplaced. I worked more on my tan than my novel, like a man writing his name in water I made no lasting impression. I’m unsure what’s more disturbing, the fact I thought I could finish a novel via lying on a beach, or how little I recall of my stay: it pretty much amounts to the memory of a small boat, pressing its outboard to its limits, chasing underwater prey around a small bay before a harpoon speared the water to be pulled out piercing a 4ft swordfish which we ate in the local taverna four hours later.

There is something about the greek islands. Unlike the bigger islands and mainland, where Greece appears as though construction workers have popped off for lunch and forgotten to return, the buildings with protruding iron rods and unfinished driveways are replaced by a rundown majesty of columned villas and painted town steps. There is an unreachable romance to the Dodecanese and Cyclades islands that provoked indescribable feelings of the sort you know cannot last; of the type that do not sustain life in the way routines provide, but feed deeper parts of the soul. It’s a trembling sense of being that rises to the surface, catches the sun in its scales, filling you with such complete purpose that you all but levitating , before it sinks back to the shadows. It was those days when you can still dream the form your life might take, rather than reflect upon the shape it became. Back then the barren islands hiding secret coves sung like slumbering deities; gods of love, lust and sated appetites, before the years filled with trashed romance and more prosaic concerns.

I struggle to even recall the novel I pressed my creative blade against to shape, but as certain as a river estuary harbours abandoned boats, I remember a prevailing wind, that I was on a course temporally striking its target; one which I had no idea I was aiming for, not until it struck. For a few weeks I held the poetic promise of a life ahead in my every fibre of being.

Most alarmingly is my inability to even know when I was in Symi writing this novel that never got published. I can’t even recall its title, so much for making an impressionable impact upon the literary world. The nearest I can get is that I met some people who had arrived with the new Faithless album. I’m not suggesting they held it aloft above their heads like the golden calf as they landed quayside, but it somehow represented all I was missing back home. Most importantly this does at least narrow it down to 2001 or 2004, but it does little to assuage the fear that I know more about Batman’s back story than my own . I’m pretty sure it was Outrospective, which means i was there in 2001.

Memory is an unreliable source of anything other than a clue to how we wished things had been. Who knows how I really occupied my month in self-imposed writing camp. I suspect it was the idea that appealed. After all, it’s the life of a writer people want, not the graft of 18 rewrites, rejection and missing a zeitgeist. In my mind I wandered around carefree and open eyed.

I sometimes wonder what the point is in doing anything if you forget it, but of course it lives on, like those pictures you never frame, somewhere. That a month of answering to nobody but goats and their staccato bells made an impact upon who I am today, and as the memories fade alongside the ferries shimmering in the aegean heat haze, it occurs to me that perhaps if we remembered better we’d not be doomed to repeat our actions, that maybe our life purpose is like a video game; we need to beat each level boss, only the boss is ourselves.

On reflection, it may have helped if I’d actually finished the novel, edited and published it to great success. Then I’d have spent a year sharing my time on Symi with readers at literary festivals and never forgotten my time there.

My book on writing - Idle Thoughts of an Idle Writer - can be found on Amazon: