Memory Map

Our assignment was to create a memory map.

I decided to based the theme on my grandfather's past life, which is a piece of memory that's been lingering around lately. There are a lot of objects and images floating through my memory, like the casset that I repaired for him to listen to his favourite chinese opera, that cane he uses, and the fake teeth that he denied using, and brief conversations that we have encountered, but when I started to draw it on paper, it seems like it's not like an easy-to-interpretate map, more like an excerpt from a comic book, I'd say. All the meaning and my emotions for him was somehow lost in "translation".

But the idea of writing about him starts to lighten me up, I started writing about him in my native language, then I used images to depict what happened in the story, giving readers some clues to hold onto.

The reaction from the class was quite interesting, when people starts to frowned upon the piece and puzzled at what I was trying to say in the foreign language, they also try to figure it out from the little symbols I've made. Some people get the it, they can tell that I am telling a story about my grandpa's past life but more people get frustrated figuring out what was written in the original text. I am glad to see the efforts people put in to read the map, it is like what I was feeling when trying to pull strings together to describe my grandfather.

Throughout the process, I was struck by the difficulty to actually depict the memory map, to trace what I was thinking about him and to map that feeling onto paper and have others sense the feeling, with the constraints of just paper and pen. I have had some positive feedback and wonder if I would do this any differently. I would try to poke at this subject later as I always wanted to do a piece about him. This memory map is definatlely helpful in getting one step further.