USE IT OR LOSE IT, Peter Blegvad's radio play about memory loss, was broadcast last
Saturday, Dec 3.
If you have leisure for such things (35 mins), click on the link below to listen
again.
it
will work for 4 more days):
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b017sr7gThe GUARDIAN had this to say about the piece:
A really good Between the Ears (Radio 3, Saturday) makes you think and makes
you listen. The weekend's edition a "radiophonic rumination on memory
failure", written by Peter Blegvad did just that. He played Dr Proctor, a man
with a sing-song memorable name, but also a sense of self bleeding away at the
edges as his past evaporates.
It was tautly produced by Iain Chambers to be a rich seam of sound layers that
could feel roomy and beautiful, with snippets of poetry and music on the theme
of memory, but also stifling and oppressive. Proctor mentions the phenomenon
of "presque vu", the sense of something being on the tip of your tongue but
out of reach, and this was the feel throughout. "What would we do, who would
we be?" Proctor asks, pondering life without a working memory while he could
still remember what the question was.
There were shards and smudges of sound, reflecting the wandering of a mind
that is malfunctioning and short-circuiting. It had serene and gorgeous
moments, and some funny ones too, thanks to Harriet Walter as a 104-year-old
self-help guru. She embraces amnesia as "extending the boundaries of the
self, becoming someone else, dismantling the imposed narratives". Like
everything in this tantalising feature, her ideas shimmered for a moment and
then slinked quietly away.
