It's an interesting experience to learn two explicitly opposing historical narratives, or to grow up with one and then learn that there is another. Same personages, same dates, same basic list of facts, but utterly different in summary and analysis.
I can contrast my historical knowledge before and after college as two very different "spins" on the same data. I realized that there is no such thing as a true historical narrative in the absolute sense for the same reason that there is no such thing as a true personal narrative in the absolute sense.
Either way, the existence of an absolute is a felt thing which feels like its opposite. It is known in its apparent absence. It is the sense that something is not the absolute. This experience, for instance, does not seem like the absolute. We think that there is such a thing because this is not that.
This was my childish conclusion, at about 8 years old: This cannot be the true world, the true life. The so-called authorities are terrified and unhappy, and this makes them profoundly stupid. I decided to become a priest because it was the only occupation I had come across (at that time) that dealt at all with reality, the true world, the true life, invisible and real. That did not actually come to pass, but I recall my decision vividly, as if it were happening now.
Is my life story "true?" No, of course it's not true. Have I never lied? Have I never been angry and resentful? Have I never felt shame, guilt, remorse? Why does my version of my life story change every time I re-create it with memory and imagination.
I have not changed. Still me. But that story goes through some twists and turns every time I touch into it. You could say the story's author really wants to hold my attention, so much that I begin to think the story is me. It is not.
What I remember is also what I forgot. My personal narrative is made of memories. It's a story. If I were to dip into the pool of select, ripe, and juicy memories right now, and allow them to entertain me for a few minutes, we'd call that reminiscing. I could sit here and imagine pictures in my mind, and have a very pleasant experience. But, what would that have to do with the truth of what is happening, or what I imagine happened in the past? Nothing. It is no more than a structure of thoughts which are clearly lying to me, combined with a much deeper intuition of self-continuity.
Moreover, this reminiscing would be happening now. There is no place where memories are "stored." Memories only happen in the present, or in the current experience. All experience occurs in the present. Memories are creative thoughts and images that illustrate the "book" of my personal narrative. They are my first line of proofs that it's all true - my "life," my story, and they are created by the mind in the current experience - not in the theoretical past, but now.
I am one out of - what is it now, eight billion people? (That's what they say. Do I believe them? No. Belief and disbelief are merely unexamined thoughts.) But, let's pretend there are eight billions of "us" living on a planet in a star system - which is not difficult, we do it every day. I think of the malleable, utterly subjective, and ever changing nature of my own life story - times eight billion. Now I ask, "What is History?"
Several years ago, I helped a friend with her on-line college work. This exposed me to all the reading/viewing material that came with the courses. One of these was a TED lecture by a History dude called "The other 1960's," which focused on the lives of an extended family living in a working class Chicago neighborhood. Their history, or the story of their life experience, had almost nothing whatever to do with Vietnam, Woodstock, Hippies, The Beatles, or any of these approved narratives.
The 1960's he was talking about - the story of this family which was explored rather deeply - resonated much more with my own memories of the same historical period than the narrative which includes all those other things I had no direct experience of. What I would later experience "as" the 1960's, or the broadcast narrative of that time period, bore no relation to my memories of the time period itself. I remember many of the names of people and events, but my story (Life) had nothing to do with them.
The 1960's narrative is an especially good example of the "untrue" nature of popular History because the idea of the decade itself, as though it were a commodity, was commercially packaged in the several decades that followed. The story began to take on the flavor of sacred mythology, like the origin story of a comic book superhero.
More interesting still was my friend's reaction to a particular photograph that was featured during this lecture - an old black and white group portrait of the entire family gathered together at a neighborhood block party. The family matriarch, now in her 60's, stands in the back of the group. The father and the sons, (wearing hats, as men continued to do during this period), with their families, are arranged in the front - with babes in arms, and children of varying ages. My friend was adamant that the family matriarch was standing in back because she was oppressed. The picture horrified her. What I saw was a woman in the position of primacy in the photograph. She was behind it all - the reason most of the persons depicted in the picture were alive, and the figure to which my eyes were first drawn by both composition and suggestion. It seemed impossible that my friend and I were looking at the same picture, but we were.
Not only is reality non-objective; it is astoundingly so.
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Speaking of the fabled 1960's -
Just last week, Tammy and I binge-watched "Get Back," the marathon Beatles documentary Peter Jackson has given us. We enjoyed it. I revisited several parts of it that I found appealing. I had always enjoyed the story of Billy Preston's involvement in those sessions because it was so spontaneous. Naturally, they're going to jam - being musicians, and that is what they do. But to see it - to see it happening on film - was very cool. And then, later on, the other Four are saying "Well, we have to figure out how we're paying him."
The best part of the story, as far as I am concerned, is that the music comes first. If you're an artist that tends to be the case. I concur. I couldn't agree more. It feels good to concur. It feels good to be aware of being affirmed. Nothing lures me more pleasantly back into self-identity with the contents of memory than nostalgia. It is like being in the Land of the Lotus Eaters. Who wants to leave? It's nice here.
But - hold on, now - when this film was made I was eight years old. My awareness of The Beatles, beyond the peripheral, began in 1980 following John Lennon's death. I had a girlfriend in college who was a great fan. Musical preferences and relationships are closely linked, of course. It was she who turned me on to The Beatles, when I was 18, or 20. Prior to that friendship, my knowledge was nil.
Yet, while Tammy and I were watching the film, I responded emotionally as if I were in my young adult or adolescent form in '69. I have to pause, think, remember: no, I wasn't there. I was eight years old in 1969, listening to Dad's Readers Digest compilation of the great decomposing Classical composers over and over and over again. Beetles were merely bugs.
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