On the Sea of Memory

Between 1998 and 1999, Jonathan Cott received electroconvulsive therapy (ECT… shock treatments) 36 times for severe depression. The repeated delivery of some 200 volts of electricity though the frontal lobes of his brain permanently erased 15 years of memory, save a few “flashbulb” memories of emotionally charged events. He no longer recognized good friends, no longer remembered films he saw, books he read, or even books he wrote. Gone too were memories of “the world as it was (the end of the Cold War, the Oslo peace accords, the abolition of apartheid, the massacre at Srebrenica).” When a friend recited the names of people who had died during those “lost” years, Cott wept upon learning that John Lennon had been killed.

A poet and author of 15 books about musicians, composers, actors and other artists, as well as other topics, Cott set out on a journey to discover what he lost and what is known about memory from a scientific as well as spiritual perspective. The result is a fascinating book called On the Sea of Memory: A Journey from Forgetting to Remembering, which essentially consists of a series of interviews with a neurologist, neuroscientist, psychologist, spiritual scholars, authors, and an actress. They discuss how the brain encodes memory, false and recovered memories, memory enhancement, Alzheimer’s disease, the role of memory and remembrance in a variety of religious and cultural traditions, and how actors tap into emotional memory. In the afterword, Cott discusses his condition with Floyd Skloot, who suffered from a similar memory loss as a result of a viral infection. Skloot has written a series of essays about his own experience, which he collected in a book called In the Shadow of Memory (which has moved to the top of my “must read” list). Both authors suffered irreversible brain damage which has severely impaired their ability to think and write, yet both have produced books that provide amazing insight into the nature of memory and memory loss.

In the preface, Cott states that “Without memory, it is exactly one’s being that is erased.” While he provides extensive proof to back up this statement, I think the book itself is a testament to the fact that his “being” survived the erasure of his memory. This thought provoking book is both terrifying and beautiful, and I highly recommend it.