It's called memory. It is essential to have it. Not only of moments, people, sensations and events that were joyful and uplifting, but also that which is impregnated with pain, sadness or failure. Mine was prodigious. It not only encompassed names, titles, dates, sensations, but it was also emotional, or capricious, or selective. But the bitch is deserting me. It happens to quite a few people my age. Alzheimer's may occur due to a family history or because the snows of yesteryear have permanently settled, but I still do not feel that predatory presence. Although bizarre and tragicomic things happen to me when I suddenly forget names that are on the tip of your tongue. For example, commenting on the radio and before a notable audience about the illness suffered by a character in a movie, it was impossible for me to remember the name of the illness in those seconds that produce fear and vertigo. And I begged the bewildered Francino to tell me which one it was. And I gave him clues: “It's the one I have.” And he, with a sense of logic, asked me: “Which one?” I clarified: “The one for which I have to take insulin every day.” And he blurted out the magic word: “Diabetes?” “That one,” I responded with my face red with embarrassment. I imagine the recipients were overcome with astonishment or pious laughter.
Faced with these regrettable forgettings of the names of people and things, I discover that every god, young and old, has a miraculous solution. They don't need mental effort at all. They click on a mobile application and Google reveals even the smallest details accurately. Or the most transcendent. If I had to resort to that to remember the name of my mother, or of beloved women and friends, or of movies, songs and books that made my life happy, I will know that everything is already lost.
And it was impossible for me to remember the title of a film that was not released in theaters in Spain and that went to a platform. Is American Fiction. It's on Prime Video. And it is the most intelligent, lucid and daring script of the year. A black man and exquisite novelist discovers that he is not capable of selling a damn book. He does not conform to racial stereotypes, he does not exploit what is politically correct, he is not harsh or vindictive, he does not use the slang Street map. He decides, using a pseudonym, to write that literature that he detests. And he becomes best-seller. And Hollywood loves him. Don't ask me the director's name. Surely Google knows this. It was Nabokov, one of the greatest, who titled that gem like this: speech, memory.
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