The habit of memory

I've wanted to thank everyone who responded to my question last week about virtual forgetting.

John's response about habit memory and body memory make a good bit of sense to me. One of the things I learned from Collin is the importance of getting into a blogging rhythm, and that's something that's both bodily and habitual. But it's also not what our bodies have grown accustomed to: schooling still happens primarily according to deadlines and in the form of paper products. So blogging (I almost accidently wrote "flogging." Hmm. No. That's old school.) is a habit that has to be taken on contra the managed assembly line. It has to be internalized, habituated in a new bodily economy.

Just think about the Saturday morning CCCC panel and the different bodily economies it asked of the people who attended. No sitting and listening. Movement. And Jenny's podcast, of course, reinforced that. Some of my favorite moments: listening to her podcast, hearing VV talk about tics at the very moment I happened to glance over at his installation, seeing that man with the eye twitch. Or hearing Derek talk about his knee, and looking up to see Derek across the table from me. Moments that were part of the panel, but unplanned.