Clive Wearing was once a prolific musician.  Infected with a viral infection that destroyed both his hippocampi, his memory was reduced to a seven second duration, at the end of which all he had experienced in the prior 7 would be erased.  In addition to this anterograde amnesia, he also experienced retrograde amnesia, not even remembering his own children.  After years spent adjusting, Clive is able to joke and quip when stimulated by conversation.  When left alone however, Clive was overcome by his abyssal memory loss, frequently remarking that he had “never seen a human” and that “it’s like being dead.”

Hippocampi are associated with declarative memory; specific memories of people, places, things, and events.  Their destruction did not impair Clive’s procedural memory, however.  Clive could play piano and sing beautifully, and even learn new songs.  With this, while Clive’s literal self was obliterated by his condition, his figurative self remains and is exposed in his music.

My piece sees several dead flowers arriving from a spectral Clive’s body, surrounded by the void.  Each is a seven second version of Clive erased from his own subjective existence every time his memory resets.  A single flower (hippocampus-shaped as my wonderful classmates pointed out) remains.  This is the current Clive.  It too will pass, but Clive exists and remains an individual, a complex emotional being, with each fallen iteration of himself linked to the next by an eternal Clive, his true self, made of music and love for his dear wife Deborah.