A Side Thought

I was having a chat with Dad a few years ago, no doubt sitting in some cafe some place, and we were talking about muscle memory when playing music. The basic premise is that after some practice and playing of songs, there’s no more need to consciously think of the notes that are needed, the order they’re needed in or where you put your fingers. It’s like the mind becomes quiet and the muscles remember what’s needed and when, and in a way they sort of play for you. It’s an experience - very calming (I don’t know about other people, but for me it can also come with a kind of elation when the band’s tight and the song’s powerful) and I often say it’s like meditation.

We were talking about muscle memory, and then it moved onto what we called cell memory. We were thinking that if cells are constantly replacing themselves, and the new cell received it’s instructions and information from the old cell – which was instructed and informed by the old cell’s predecessor – how far back would this go? And since the human body was one cell at conception and passed the messages along, having received it’s instructions and information from the egg and sperm, is this information and instruction inter-generational? Also, could memory be a basis for the instruction and information?

When Soph and I were walking to Hope Cove through rolling green hills and what I had imagined to be “typical English countryside”, I felt strangely at home. The landscape, the colours, the smells – they seemed to fit, and they seemed familiar. There was something a little, well, not quite right, but it still felt like home – like it fit. I haven’t seen countryside like this before, so the feeling has no basis, rationally speaking. The only thing I could think was somehow this is imprinted in me, courtesy of my ancestors, and I almost instantly remembered the chat with Dad. I feel very much at home in very different places – Melbourne city, Halls Gap, that grassy bit near the fish & chip shop in Freemantle with Mum, Nan & Pop’s kitchen and Mitchell St. I never expected to feel at home in my ancestor’s home – but I very much do.