An airplane ride is a gap in the space-time continuum. One time I even rang in the year of 2024 twice—now what kind of time-change sorcery transpired there?
The other week, propped up in 39B’s navy blue seat, I awaited the transatlantic voyage home that United promised to take me on. As I buckled my seatbelt, a flight attendant on the overhead speaker rattled off nonsense: windspeed, snack services, local time, all that boring jazz you don’t actually pay attention to because if your plane goes down, why would you care to know the temperature of the ocean into which you’re about to plummet? Before signing off, she cheerfully mentioned that the flight would only last ten hours and fifty-one minutes. My mouth half-dropped open. I gulped, then fearfully locked eyes with my friend, Kacy, to the left of me. Only ten hours and fifty-one minutes–and oh, did I forget to mention that we only have tuna salad for every meal service? Kacy mimicked in her best Greek accent, plastically grinning ear to ear. I turned and overoptimistically chimed in, Oh, also, the soap dispensers in the bathrooms are actually meat grinders half the time, so don’t forget to wash your hands, but also watch out!
The aircraft left sturdy ground, and the time warp ensued.
Curled in a compact ball for the first two hours, I let Sheila Heti engulf me with her novel Pure Color when I noticed the overhead lights had gone down and everyone with a window seat had decided to shut their blinds. A wave of eerie unease washed over me. Why had every single person collectively closed their windows on this beautiful, sunny day and locked eyes with the tiny televisions before them? Nothing says existential dread like observing human behavior on a plane that seems to be headed nowhere…
Instead of fighting the collective migration, I grabbed the wheel with two hands and leaned into the skid. Scrolling through United’s never-ending Entertainment Selection, my fingers overtook the conscious side of my brain, and the next thing I knew, the pilot of Severance was rolling.
Years passed. A new age cycled in. BS (Before Severance) became AS (After Severance).
I have always been fascinated by the concept of memory, and more acutely, the act of remembering. I could actively feel my neurons firing after watching almost the entirety of season one in the remaining duration of my ticking time in seat 39B (and, subsequently, season two in the following two days). I could talk about the Severance world for hours on end, but to put it most simply, let’s say it clearly has 27 Emmy nominations for a reason.
The bare bones of the show focus on the main character Mark, who has ‘severed’ his brain: there are two versions of him, a ‘work Mark’ and a ‘home Mark.’ The two Marks share no memories of what the other experiences in their respective environments. Eventually, they turn on each other.
Sorry, that was a bit of a spoiler. I’ll try to keep the more shocking ones to a minimum.
If every human being is, to an extent, a culmination of their experiences, then what happens when we can’t remember those very experiences? Are we still us? Who do we become? Is it the details that give us identity, or is it the lasting impact of the moments that make us, us? Or both? Or an uneven split?
On a Friday night last February, in the raggedy basement of the Crew team’s house, I took a break from dancing myself clean and sat on the sidelines, regaining my breath. I watched the swarm of Sexy Cats and Lumberjacks (clever theme, huh?) sway their bodies to another Up-and-Coming Student DJ. As I watched and breathed, a somewhat Sexy Lumberjack sat to my left. He introduced himself, and we began chatting. Twenty minutes and a new friend later, I excused myself back to the slab of concrete we were generously calling a dance floor.
A few days later, I saw him in the harsh lighting of the Sterling nave. I smiled at him. Then, he introduced himself. Yup. He had no recollection that we had, in fact, met and had a fairly significant conversation a few days prior. Knife to the gut.
Meaningful interactions can entirely be lost from someone’s consciousness. Where do they go? And who do they belong to?
How does the accessibility of our memories impact how they affect our consciousnesses?
How would you act if you were dropped into a room on a conference table with no recollection of your name, your mother, or where you’re from, and the only thing you can remember is that Delaware is a state? Whoops, sorry. I did it again… spoiler.
In this column, Ruminations on Recall, I’ll be grappling with the concepts of memory and, more keenly, the act of remembering. Trust me, I don’t have anything figured out—but I do have thoughts, and lots of them. If I can remember them, I’ll put them on the page. If not, they’ll live in a ‘severed’ ether, never to be recovered and never to be recalled.
I shut off the tiny 4×6 in-flight-screen that had consumed every crevice of my attention and made Kacy open her window. The skyscrapers were coming into view. Maybe I’ll never know the intricacies of human consciousness, but I know the tip of Manhattan is real and it’s beautiful. The island sparkled as we punctured the dramatic bubble of New York’s light pollution. Even just momentarily, my eerie dread was replaced with giddy comfort: I was home.
And now, all that remains is a memory.