Audiobook Nora Ephron \"I Remember Nothing\"
Vocal Characteristics
Language
EnglishVoice Age
Middle Aged (35-54)Accents
North American (General)Transcript
Note: Transcripts are generated using speech recognition software and may contain errors.
I remember Nothing by Nora Ephron. I remember nothing. I have think forgetting things for years at least since I was in my thirties. I know this because I wrote something about it at the time. I have proof off course. I can't remember exactly where I wrote about it or when, but I could probably hunt it up if I had to. In my early days of forgetting things, words would slip away and names. I did what you normally do When this happens. I scrolled through a mental dictionary, trying to figure out what letter the word began with and how many syllables were involved. Eventually, the lost thing would float back into my head, recaptured. I never took such lapses as harbingers of doom or old age or actual Senate, since I always knew that whatever I'd for gotten was going to come back to me sooner or later. Once I went to a store to buy a book about Alzheimer's disease, I forgot the name of it. I thought it was funny, and it was at the time. Here's a thing I've never been able to remember the title of that movie with Jeremy Irons, the one about Claus von Bulow. You know the one All I ever succeeded in remembering was that it was three words long, and the middle word was of for many years that this this did not bother me at all because no one I knew could ever think of the title, either. One night eight of us were at the theater together and that one of us could retrieve it. Finally, it intermissions. Someone went out on the street and Gould it. We were all informed of the title. We all vowed to remember it forever. For all I know, the other seven did I, on the other hand, and back to remembering that it's three words long with enough in the middle. By the way, when we finally learned the title that night, we all agreed it was a bad title. No wonder we didn't remember. I am going to Google for the name of that movie. Be right back. It's reversal of fortune. How is one to remember that title? It is nothing to do with anything, but here's the point. I have been forgetting things for years, but now I forget in a new way. I used to believe I could eventually retrieve what was whatever was lost and then committed to memory. Now I know I can't possibly. Whatever is gone is hopelessly gone, and what's new doesn't stick. The other night I met a man who informed me that he had a neurological disorder and couldn't remember the faces of people he had met. He said that sometimes he looked at himself in the mirror, had no idea whom he was looking at. I don't mean to minimize this man's ailment, which, if I'm sure, is a bonafide syndrome with a long name. That cat that's capitalized but all I could think of. Waas. Welcome to my World. A couple of years ago, the actor Ryan O. Neal confessed that he'd recently failed to recognize his own daughter, Tatum, at a funeral, and it accidentally made a pass setter. Everyone was just mental about this, but not be. A month earlier, I found myself in a mall in Las Vegas when I saw a very pleasant looking woman coming toward me, smiling, her arms outstretched, and I thought, Who is this woman? Where do I know her from? Then she spoke, and I realized it was my sister Amy, you might think, Well, how is she to know her sister would be in Las Vegas? I'm sorry to report that not only did I know, but she was the person I was meeting in the mall. All this makes me sad and wistful, but mostly makes me feel old and many symptoms of old age. Aside from the physical, I occasionally repeat myself. I used the expression when I was young. Often I don't get the joke, although I pretend I do. If I could see a play or a movie for a second time, it's as if I didn't see it at all the first time. Even if the first time was just recently, I have no idea who anyone in People magazine is. I used to think my problem was that my disk wistful. Now I'm forced to conclude that the opposite is true. It's becoming empty. I have not yet reached the nadir of old age, the land of Antidote, but I'm approaching it. I know, I know. I should have kept a journal. I should have saved the love letters. I should have taken a storage room somewhere in Long Island city For all the papers, I thought I'd never need to look at again. But I didn't, and sometimes I'm forced to conclude that I remember nothing. For example, I met Eleanor Roosevelt. It was June 1961 and I was on my way to a political internship at the Kennedy White House. All the Wellesley vaster interns drove to Hyde Park to meet the former first lady. I was dying to meet her. I'd grown up with a photograph in our den of her, standing with my parents backstage at a play they'd written. My mother was wearing a course AJ and Eleanor War pearls. It was a photograph I always thought of his iconic. If I'm using the word correctly, which, if I am, it will be. For the first time, we were among the thousands of Americans, mostly Jews who had dense and in their dance photos of Eleanor Roosevelt. I idolized the woman. I couldn't believe I was going to be in the same room with her. So what was she like that day in Hyde Park? You may wonder, I have no idea. I can't remember what she said or what she wore. I could barely summon up a mental picture of the room where we met her, although I have a very vague memory of drapes. But here's what I do remember. I got lost on the way, and ever since, every time I've been on the Taconic State Parkway I'm reminded that I got lost there on the way to meet Eleanor Roseville. But I don't remember a thing about Eleanor Roosevelt herself. In 1964 the Beatles came to New York for the first time. I was a newspaper reporter and I was sent to the airport to cover their arrival. It was a Friday. I spent the weekend following them. Around Sunday night. They appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show. You could make an argument that the sixties began that night on The Ed Sullivan Show. It was a historic night. I was there. I stood in the back of the Ed Sullivan Theater and watched. I remember how amazingly obnoxious the fans were, the teenage girls who screamed and yelled and behave like idiots. But how are the Beatles? You may ask. Well, you're asking the wrong person. I could barely hear them. I'm marched on Washington to protest the war in Vietnam. This was in 1967 and it was the most significant event of the anti war movement. Thousands and thousands of people were there. I went with a lawyer. I was dating. We spent most of the day in a hotel room having sex. I'm not proud of this, but I mentioned it because it explains why I honestly cannot remember anything about the protests, including whether I ever even got to the Pentagon. I don't think I did. I don't think I've ever been to the Pentagon, but I wouldn't bet a nickel on it one way or the other. Norman Mailer wrote an entire book about this march called The Armies of the Night. It was 288 pages long. It won the Pulitzer Prize, and I can barely write two paragraphs about it. If you knew Norman Mailer and me and we're at guess, which of us cared more about sex? You would, of course, picked Norman Mailer. How wrong you would be here is in people I met that I remember nothing about Justice Hugo Black, Ethel Merman, Jimmy Stewart, Alger Hiss, Senator Hubert Humphrey, Cary Grant Benny Goodman. Peter used enough. Harry Kern. It's George Abbott. Dorothy Parker. I went to the Bobby Riggs Billie Jean King tennis match, and I couldn't really see anything from where I was sitting. I went to stand in front of the White House the night Nixon resigned. And here's what I have to tell you about it. My wallet was stolen. I went to many legendary rock concerts and spent time wondering when they would in and where we would eat afterward on whether the restaurant would still be open and what I would order. I went to at least 100 Nick games, and I remember only the night the Reggie Miller scored eight points in the last nine seconds. I went to cover the war in Israel in 1973 but my therapist absolutely forbid me to go to the front. I was not at Woodstock, but I might as well have been because I couldn't remember it anyway. On some level, my life has been wasted on me. After all, if I can't remember it, who can? The past is slipping away, and the present is a constant effort. I can't possibly keep up when I was younger, I managed overcome my resistance to new things. After a short period of negativity, I flung myself at the Cuisinart food processor. I was curious about technology. I became a champion of e mails and blog's. I found the romantic. I have a made movies about them. But now I believe that almost anything new has been put on the Earth in order to make me feel bad about my dwindling memory, and I've erected a wall to protect myself for most of it.