I REMEMBER IT  – 579 IMPRESSIONS OF MARSEILLES

A book of memories in the form of fragments.

Each of these memories finish by “I remember it” and are numbered from 1 to 579. These are,  like Perec's work, bits of everyday life, things which, in such and such a year,  everyone of the same age will have seen, experienced and shared but have since disappeared and been forgotten; they were not worthy of being part of history, or in the Memoirs of statesmen, sports people and movie stars.

A homage to Harry Mathews and Georges Perec

These Je m’en rappelle were put together between January 2008 and June 2014. The principle is simple: try to find not a memory but an impression, a sensation, an instant, a moment, a sound, a colour, a fear, a doubt or great and small pleasures by defining them through an arrangement of letters on paper like others pin insects onto card that they then put in boxes.
These “ideas or experiences” are mostly from the time between my first and twenty-second year, i.e. between 1951 and 1973, the year I left Marseilles to go up to Paris. So they are thoughts skimmed from the beginnings of my life and implicitly sketch out what must have been, in spite of profound internal distress, a very happy childhood in Marseilles.