Dude. Eternal Sunshine came out a decade ago.

Yet they still haven’t perfected the technology from it for me yet. Or have they?

F’real though. Talk about synchronicity (or coincidence – whatever): I was just thinking about this movie today and wondering what kind of effect a procedure like this would have practically.

I mean, in a way we all can do this to ourselves. We do it after traumas or as a reaction to negative shiz to cope. We do it by suppressing. We do it by denying ourselves our feelings about memories. And we don’t even realize we’ve done it ’til our buddies bring it up one day, and we short-circuit a little as we reluctantly exhume these subconsciously buried cognitive corpses for involuntary examination.

In fact, ironically, I did exactly this to the guy (forgot – not murdered, buried, and dug up) who I saw this movie with. (with whom I saw this movie? movie-ng on…)

But, of course, I still remember him and the experience (duh, I’m writing this article). In the midst of exam week, it merely served as a means to survive a breakup and learning he’d been dicking around for four years. For good measure, the variables of alcohol and new men were also imported into the experiment to ensure the success of this self-administered mind-mining.

Although my personal attempts to mitigate suffering via alcohol have never been helpful long term, the next-day effects did offer a temporary loss of bad memories (and stomach contents). But would an actual medical procedure be akin to this – “like a night after heavy alcohol”, as the doc in the film says?

And what about the connections we have that tie like a cascade to the thought of that person? Yeah, they’re supposed to get rid of everything that reminds him or her of her or him… but is the brain really that compartmentalized? There’s this song Jon Brion does for the soundtrack called “Strings That Tie To You”. What if Joel had been an obsessive when he had the procedure done – and all the “strings” (or associations) to Clementine extended to everything in his life in an integral way?

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And is time a factor – do those strings get shorter and tighter over time? If so, do they change the procedure for those people? And how do you account for the experiential shit you can’t just bring in from home and throw out – like that stuff you forget about until a trigger unexpectedly pops up? Does all’a that just end up feeling like déjà vu?

Or the procedure length – what about the memories you can’t mentally revisit/erase over the course of just one night?

It may sound silly to speculate, but science isn’t far away.

Scientists are already looking into how we get a mind spotless (eh, or less spotty) of our fear-ssociations. Genes like tet1 are currently being studied to “memory extinguish” that past we want to forget, but can’t seem to. I don’t get it completely, but it makes newer memories and associations seem more accessible than wallowing in the ones that have happened. It’s actually cool because people with bad memories more serious than a case of the feels (like soldiers with PTSD or abuse victims) could reintegrate into society and overcome the pain of their pasts.

But, dude. That’s not the worst of it…

When I was looking this up, I got distracted and saw this other thing in the works. Apparently a legion of evil scientists are creating dream and mind-reading machines that can make crude video images of what you’re actually thinking, dreaming, remembering, etc. – all with MRI and whatnot. It’s in early development, but the fact that they can even do it is equal parts awesome and nauseating.

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So before long – as Joel’s Clem-memories are erased – the whole thing can be projected onto the wall above his sleeping face like some ephemeral cinematic montage for a viewing party of pothead techies drinking his liquor as they Dyson his mind.

Man, I dunno. Can’t I just move on and then pretend I did it? Act confused when you say hi?

I’d talk about how validating it is to pick ourselves up by our bootstraps. And there is that.

But, really, I just wanna see your hurt face when you think you’ve been erased.

#doublewin