The Texture of Memory Is Corduroy

[Jackrabbit is nearing the home stretch on her field exam!  In the meantime, here's part two of that conversation regarding cognitive literary studies and The Laramie  Project.  If I have any brains left after the exam, I'll rejoin you shortly.]  

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So, in my last post I shared a personal anecdote that created a little doubt about Jed Schultz's version of events regarding his parents' ambivalence to his acting career in The Laramie Project.  He claims that his duet from Angels in America was the first time his parents hadn't come to support him, but my friend "Andie" can remember lots of times that they didn't come to events because of scheduling conflicts.  So, whom do I believe?  Now that we're almost ten years down the road...  I believe them both.  Perhaps I don't believe that they both represent objective reality.  But I do believe that both versions have story truth, and without any way to determine the objective facts, that's what I have to settle for.

Here's what I mean: I thoroughly believe that this moment was the first time Jed felt disappointment in his parents; it's also the first time he had to break away from their authority and suffer the consequences.  I believe that his dismay and disappointment is real.  And, as for "Andie?"  I believe that her memory accurately represents her childhood recollections of paling around at school and church together with Jed because both of them had extremely busy parents.  Now that the objective truth can't be discovered, I have to settle for story truth.   He remembers the disappointment.  She remembers the strength of their childhood relationship in the face of parents who couldn't always be there.

So, story truth isn't the same as objective truth, but it has value nonetheless.   It's not a distinction we're normally willing to make, but it's an important one for understanding how we should approach the truth of The Laramie Project.  If we treat this play as only forensic, verifiable fact, two things will happen.  One is that people will discover that a lot of it's not "true"  and want to reject what it has to tell us.  The other is that they won't understand the depth and complexity that this play has to offer.  We have to understand that the texture of memory is uneven and full of gaps, layers and crevices.  We have to feel the textures of memory more like it's corduroy than silk.

A Sense of Place: Further Thoughts

So, the reason I've been wondering about place recently is because I'm trying to figure out how The Laramie Project understands the way that the landscape and the space informs our reading of Matt's murder. Is this a really a universal landscape, or a particular one tied to the contingencies of a specific place, one that has a special significance to it?

I had a fascinating conversation shortly before the October 12 performance with a group of actors about this very issue. We were chatting about Matt's murder and the first play, and the conversation eventually turned to why Matt's murder happened to capture the national imagination and start a national dialogue on hate crimes. One group of people thought that it was how Matt died that was the major factor. This one guy in particular was emphatic that place wasn't a relevant factor: "it wouldn't matter where Matt died," he kept asserting. "We'd still be having this debate right now." This fellow was adamant about his point, and I sincerely respect his opinion; he has a good argument that I can't refute.

I and about three others, however, thought where Matt died had a lot to do with it, too. I firmly believe that, if Matt were murdered in, say, Boston, Massachusetts instead of Laramie, Wyoming, his death wouldn't have resonated with the nation in quite the same way. And I don't think we would be reading "The Boston Project."