CREATIVE NON-FICTION

You're Making It Up
By Louisa Bello

I've often been told it didn't happen this way: the day was summer blue, traffic-jammed.
There was the couple, from somewhere else; the red-haired woman, the afroed man. They
were strangers, they walked towards me. Faceless. There I was, sitting against the grey,
gnarly, dried bark of the wide-girthed chestnut trunks, perfect for climbing and where I sat
every summer. I was eight-years-old, wild-haired, summer-bronzed; the photographed
me, the story-told me. Then, the scene around me: the football game on the patchy grass,
at the roadside. The white daisies, ripe for picking, amongst the long green grass. The
firemen with their hoses practised on their tower in the fire station next door, their
instructions reverberating around the estate in the sun. Geometric shadows crept slowly
across the parking lot, devouring cars inch by inch by hour by hour as the sun moved
across the sky. Washing hung from numerous white box balconies, flutterless. I can't
remember the cold of the breeze on my face though I can add this feeling if I try. The traffic
horns, the exhaust fumes, the busy road running parallel to our estate, and which we
weren't allowed to cross. The goals scored, the cheers hurrahed, the banter thrown, the
balls lost, the balls found. The chitter-chatter, the screeches, the whoops and the wails.
My friends; I can see, I can hear them. And this couple, the faceless ones, they
stopped before me and asked a question: Where does Louisa Bello live?
I don't remember their voices, yet I do believe this question was asked because it
triggered my clever diversion tactic: I sent them right, then I ran left, to get to my father
before these tattle-taling adults did, scampering up through the concrete stairwell, the
smell of bleach, the unbreakable plastic windows scratched by bored keys, the flaking
paint, the residents; leaving, sitting, arriving, flashing past as I pelted up the grey slab
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steps. The truth is, I don't really remember running up those stairs that particular day, yet
I remember diverting these strangers and this was, after all, the journey to my home. The
question is: am I really recalling this particular journey or have I added it in?
Onwards: the balcony, second floor, first door, brown wood, the shiny brass
letterbox, the numbers 1 and 5. The panting, the memory of my eight-year-old self, hand
pressed against the sand-flecked red brick to the side of the door, regaining breath,
composure. Dad at the door. The aroma of sweet pepper stew, wet kitchen windows, the
sternness of Dad's face, though it is his face of the present in the memory, not of that time.
The displeasure in the dark eyes at the unruly daughter presented: the hair, the clothes, the
demeanour of this child. I know Dad's displeasure. The wiping of the hands on the green,
or red, or blue or purple tea towel, probably red, there may have been no tea-towel at all.
The call to mother to watch over me, the Dad's gait, striding towards the closed front door,
opening the door to confront the trouble. The silent discussion between parents, across the
hallway, above my head.
This memory is over thirty years old. My family remember it differently. I've never
spoken to dad about it. Aunty Diane maintains it was her and my nan there instead of my
mum, and my nan agreed before her memory was stolen by dementia. What this means is
that I have altered this memory subconsciously, for reasons unknown, as yet.

Aunty Diane, what do you remember about him visiting?

Lou... why do you want to go raking up these things?
Because I need to know.
I don't want to talk about it, again.
I just want to know the truth of the memory. I'm not sure I remember what really
happened, not properly.
(She sighs, moves around a bit as if to shake off the uncomfortable feeling her awful
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niece is bringing upon her yet again.)

Ok, again. Me and your nan were round to visit. Your dad was cooking a roast.
A roast?
Yep, it was a Sunday
but
What?
Not pepper stew?
No, remember Lou, we tended to visit on Sundays?
(silence)
What did they look like?
What do you mean?
Describe them?
Well, he was dark, y'know, like your father. Black.
Yes, Di. And the lady?
She was his partner. White, blonde hair
Blonde? Are you sure?
Course I'm sure, I stood and spoke to her for at least 20minutes, she had blonde
hair.
Not red?
Red? Why on earth would you think red? I think Id remember if she was ginger!
Say red, Aunty Diane, ginger is considered politically incorrect these days
Oh for Pete's sake

I have no interest in finding the man and the woman. But I would like to know whether I
have made up parts of this memory, why I can't remember their faces, why my memory
differs to that of my family's version. We were all there on the same day yet I recall the
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event so differently to everyone else.

What I feel is most important, is to understand the truth of the memory, to have a
true representation of this significant event in my young life. What I fear is that I may have
an ability to alter my memories, to tweak the details, to adapt them, to irrevocably change
them at whim. I am not a superhero. I don't want this ability, I simply want true memories
of my life and to trust in their truth.

My friend Suzanne, a clinical psychologist, recommended an article to me. Written by Dr

Catherine Loveday, a neuroscientist at University of Westminster, 'Serial your memory
can play tricks on you Here's How,' explains how our memories are susceptible to errors
and contamination and why.
...It is (also) important to understand that memories are not constructed from
precise records of what actually happened but rather from records of what we
experienced. Our perception is shaped by all sorts of things: our knowledge, our mood,
the social context, our physical perspective, even our vocabulary (the language we have
available seems to affect the way we encode and retrieve memories). But critically, the
reconstruction process itself is also shaped by all of these factors.1a
According to Dr Loveday, a memory is a 'series of brief fleeting moments' made up
of sensory photos sounds, smells, thoughts and feelings. This means that each time we
retrieve a memory we must piece it back together, re-building it, using these sensory
photos to create an 'episodic memory'. This episodic memory is then placed within our
'autobiographical memory' timeline.
So, our memories can be altered at the storage/ encoding part of the process when
they are first made and also at the retrieval part. If we are able to conjure up false
1 Dr Catherine Loveday: 'Serial-Your mind can play tricks on you here's how,' The Conversation

<http://theconversation.com/serial-your-memory-can-play-tricks-on-you-heres-how-34827 > [accessed 10

January2015]

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memories, if a wide range of variables contaminate our memories, how are we able to tell
what is real and what isn't?
Dr Elizabeth Loftus, widely known to be the foremost 'false memory' expert and
Professor of psychology and social behaviour at the University of California, succinctly
explains how memory can be altered in her fascinating TED Talk: 'The Fiction of Memory'.
Describing memory as, 'a bit more like a Wikipedia page', she says, you can go in there
and change it, but so can other people. Dr Loftus also comments on how our 'ego' might
even be at work, ...our memories have a superiority complex, we remember we got
better grades than we did, that we voted in elections we didn't vote in, that we gave more
money to charity than we did, that our kids walked and talked earlier than they really
did. It's not that we're lying. It's just something that happens naturally to allow us to feel
a little better about ourselves.
In his play, The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde describes memory as "the diary
that we all carry about.Humans certainly act like this is the case think about your
recollections, family stories, personal memories how confident are you that they are true
'diary entries'? But psychologists increasingly believe that regardless of our confidence, our
memories are at best inexact and at worst completely false.
The 'lost in the mall technique is a fantastic example of just how easily false
memories can be implanted and recalled. Designed by Dr Loftus, the technique involved
implanting a false memory in an adult of becoming lost in a shopping mall as a child, after
which the participant was tested to see if it was possible to reproduce this false 'implanted'
memory, despite it never actually having occurred. Loftus found that 25% of the
participants came to develop a distinct "memory" of the implanted event.

Dr Elizabeth Loftus, 'The Fiction of Memory', Tedtalk presentation

<http://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_loftus_the_fiction_of_memory?language=en > [accessed 10 January 2015]
Oscar Wilde: 'The Importance of Being Earnest' "Act II." Plays. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978. N. page. Print.
Dr Elizabeth Loftus: 'Creating False Memories', Scientific American, September 1997, Vol 277 #3 pages 70-75

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In need of an explanation as to why the human memory seems so flawed, I sent my notes
about my childhood memory to Dr Martin Conway, Head of Psychology at City University,
London and one of the country's leading memory expert witnesses. He invited me to meet
with him, a meeting which I decided to video record in order to obtain as true a record as
possible and, in all honesty, for fear of my cheatin' memory.

So Louisa, when you have this memory do you see yourself in the memory?
Yes, I do. I watch myself sitting under the tree, outside the house, like I'm watching
a film.
Ah. So, this is an observer memory. People who have emotional or traumatic
experiences often observe themselves in their memory Freud thought it was a defence
mechanism to protect the person from the traumatic emotions associated with the
memory.
So Im observing myself to protect myself? At eight years old? I was a clever kid!
No, later at the recall stage. If you had a field perspective, you'd be closer to the
contents of the memory more involved in the memory. If you were having some negative
emotions at the time, these might have been emotions that wouldn't be good for you to reexperience at the time of recall.
So Ive detached myself to protect myself?
You've re-coded the memory so you see yourself in it. The faces were probably
erased because they may remind you too much of what was happening. Our internal
censor.
But Ive never felt any trauma
then that's good, it's obviously working, isn't it?

Looking back, what should have been the stuff of a weepy Hollywood blockbuster
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meeting my biological father wasn't as traumatic as one might have thought. This new
information from Dr Conway finding out our memory is on our side, protecting us by
altering itself, using what variables it has on hand at the time to create the least damaging
memory possible, censoring itself to protect from emotional harm this is interesting, if a
tad sci-fi scary but it is beginning to make sense.

My life continued without any fallout from meeting my biological father and I pretty much
forgot about the event, thanks to my protective memory (and loving family). However, the
memory has sometimes resurfaced, especially when I encounter the word 'biological'.

Lou/issa, (said my father, in the memory in his British Nigerian accent of now
does a voice ever change in memory?) Louissa this man (the faceless man, standing in
front of us, in front of the whole estate) is your biological father. Go. Go to him and say
hello.
Biological
Biological
Biological

The-trauma-that-never-was: your father pushing you, an eight year old, towards

another man you've never met before and who claims to be your real father, whose face
your memory has since erased to protect you: the-trauma-that-never-was.
Applying what I have learned so far, I approach this part of the memory with
caution: this may not even be memory. It is also possible that this could simply be
application of adult knowledge, an imagined scene, created from what I have been told
over the years about the event. As for this word 'biological'; having learnt the meaning of it
in my teens, it's possible that, once I understood a noun was a noun and an adjective was
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an adjective and that biological was indeed an adjective which meant (amongst other
meanings) related by birth, I may simply have spliced it into the scene where I thought it
would have appeared, to strengthen the memory. My aunt cannot remember my father
making this dramatic statement at all. Do I remember it, really? Yet sometimes the word
scratches like a needle being placed on an old record; the memory struggling through the
ageing grooves, each time sounding vaguely different to, more faded than, the last. Dr
Conway has a suggestion for this:
Aha, Louisa, it is quite possible that this word 'biological', this is your 'cue' word.
My cue word?
Yes. The word may have formed an emotional trigger at the moment of storage and
is therefore used as a permanent cue to retrieve the memory.
Dr Conway's suggestion means that if I really did hear that word at the time, I may
have bound it tightly to the memory, so each time I hear the word after the event, it recalls
the memory. Makes sense. After which, me being me, seek to revisit the memory again,
searching for clarity, perhaps requestioning my aunt (poor aunt), who would be forced to
'retrieve' what she had stored to satisfy me (though always without much enthusiasm,
underplaying the event to the point of near extinction). Which also means, if I were to
apply Dr Loveday's theoryb, rarely recalling this memory might have affected my encoding
of it, and thus could be part of the reason I remember it so differently each time.
According to both Dr Loveday and Dr Conway, my mood, emotions and social
situation at each retrieval affect the memory so it is shifting further away from the 'truth',
or, as I am finding, away from how I first perceived the events at the time they took place.

I ask Dr Conway about the colour of the woman's hair. My best friend, whom I met ten
years later, has red hair. Perhaps she has affected that detail of the memory, perhaps she is
b

Dr Catherine Loveday, Serial- your mind can play tricks on you here's how

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the reason I changed the colour of the woman's hair?

That's simple Louisa, Dr Conway responds. You're putting red hair on this woman to
make her appear friendlier.
The protection function again, I think, edited at a later recall, perhaps.

I have an imagination that has always been vivid and far-reaching and as wild as my hair
once was. I have eagerly fed, inflated and expanded it at every opportunity, ever since I was
a little girl. I wanted to believe in fairies, the witching hour, the BFG. I have the type of
imagination that can see magic lands in the clouds, wizards in the wine and monsters in
every dark corner. I still sleep with the light on and never watch horror movies. You won't
catch me saying anything five times in a mirror. Though I do not believe in heaven (for that
hasn't yet been proved by science go figure), the Ouija board always m o v e d!
Perhaps my memory has been affected by this 'over-active' imagination?
Did you know that if you stick someone's head in a brain scanner, the pattern for
remembering and imagining is the same? According to Dr Conway, both cognitive
functions use the same systems, however more research is needed in this area. The experts,
he says, still aren't at all sure of how it all works.

I remember mum taking my hand, dad, leaving the flat, mum watching them down below,
from the balcony. I remember being too short to look over the balcony without tiptoeing.
Downstairs, the woman, the white woman with the red hair or the blonde hair, was smiling
at me. She wore green or red, I see her in both colours, depending on the day I try to
retrieve the memory. Sometimes, she wears a suit. I never see her face. I see the sun
spilling through her red (not blonde) hair, illuminating her paleness, like a model from a
L'Oral advert. Marketing enhanced memory? Have my family's reactions or my feelings
for each person changed my memory? Why aren't my brother or sister in the memory
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when we always played together?

The man who walked towards me had swagger; as though he'd walked out of a
blaxploitation movie. This was the eighties. Before I knew what blaxploitation was. In my
memory, he wears a blue waistcoat and blue trousers, dark aviator glasses and has a
perfectly combed, evenly distributed afro. The truth is, I can't remember what he was
wearing, nor what he looked like, I must be dressing him from the fashion files stored in
my memory. As Dr Conway suggests, it may have been to make him appear friendlier.
Perhaps my siblings aren't in the memory as Im protecting them too? It certainly feels
easier with this knowledge to make such practical assumptions. And, I do recall a photo of
my Dad, taken in his youth (and which I love), in which he is wearing a similar outfit.

Somebody must have told them where you lived Lou

Nope Aunty Diane, I sent them the wrong way
No, no you couldn't have. Someone else on the estate told them
but...I remember them coming up to me and
Don't be silly! You were upstairs with us Louisa, you were sitting with me!
We were
watching TV?
Yes. (During one of these discussions with Aunty Diane, it suddenly dawned on me
that perhaps I DID remember this but then it's possible that my positive recognition of
this fact is simply because she has told me so many times.)
I remember holding on to you tightly Lou when your dad came in and said who'd
arrived.
(silence)
Was it sunny?
Sunny?
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Yes, outside. Was it a warm day?

No, no I don't think so. It was autumn.
(silence).
In fact, it was raining. Your dad took them downstairs and they stood underneath
the porch to shelter from it. He didn't want to invite them in.
(silence)
What were we watching?
Ummm...we were probably watching Benny Hill.
Benny Hill?
Your Dad liked that show (her memory or a fill-in?)
(silence).
Did we go downstairs?
Well, yes, I told you to stay upstairs but you were so wilful!
Haha.
I went to support him, y'know, not having your mum there...
Mum wasn't there?
No, love, again, definitely not, she'd left by then.
Mum wasn't there? You're sure? That's what you said last time too...
(silence).
You were about 11 years old
11? Not 8?
Nope, your mum left home when you were 11, didn't she?
Yes. So she was definitely not there.
No love, she definitely wasn't there.
Fuck.
Lou/i/sa!
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I don't remember them watching at all, but I imagine they must have been. I can see them
all standing around us, watching. My sister, my brother must have been watching, the
neighbours must have been, Hilda, the neighbourhood busybody must have been
watching, the firemen from their tower must have been, my mum watching, the couple
watching, my father watching and I, I am watching the scene, watching them all, watching
us, watching me, an observer, protected.
I remember burying my face in my father's thigh, being small enough to actually do
that, holding on to him for dear life. I do remember this. This is true. It is there, a solid
memory. How do I know? Aunty Diane remembers it too. She watched me do it.
Corroboration of facts.

So memories are entirely personal meanings, Dr Conway?

Yes. Louisa, yes! Everyone thinks they are records of the past and to some extent
they are they can't be completely fantasised. They have some connection with the past,
sometimes strong, other times weaker. But in all memories, things are inferred and
guessed and made up unconsciously.
I can't help thinking this is a major flaw in the memory system...
No, I don't think it is. The visual world is made up as well, there are no colours out
there. We see them, but they don't exist. They are just wavelengths of light. 3D space is a
construction of our brain and that's good as it means we can get around in the world better
than we could otherwise.
So you're saying there is no point in human life at which we can see things for
what they really are?
No. Impossible.
Why not? There's a reality, a world around us? Why can't we experience that
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reality in truth?
You have to remember that we are very social beings and for us as a species it's more
important to have shared personal meanings than to have a really good representation of
the past. Depression sufferers generally have a better representation of the past. They can
see it as it is and, if you think about it, it's not very nice.
So our memory is simply a life tool, an aid, trying to make the best of the world
around us?
Louisa, we're trying to be social beings and that's a really complicated difficult thing
to do. Our memories and perceptions of the world are formed in this way simply to allow
us to do that.
How clever. How annoying.

Watching my interview with Dr Conway afterwards was nothing short of a revelation. At

the time, I remember feeling nervous, I could hear myself stuttering and was struggling to
stay focused on his answers in order to formulate my next question, while also trying to
decide whether his frequent tapping of my knee underneath the table was amiable
enthusiasm or otherwise. At the same time I was concerned about either his coffee breath
or mine and my belly grumbling as I hadn't eaten breakfast yet. The room was warm and, I
remember imagining my embarrassment (red face, stuttering, possibly making excuses to
leave) if horror of horrorsI began to sweat through my dress, even though that has
never happened to me before.
The laptop was placed on the table to the left of us and what can be seen in the
recording are two people from the waist up, the window on the right of us. We are facing
each other discussing the subject animatedly for approximately thirty minutes. Dr Conway
leans forward eagerly and often into my personal space. I seem to fawn and gesticulate a
lot, obviously impressed. I don't remember gesticulating at all. You can't see the knee13 / 15

tapping below table level.

This video further illustrates the impossibility of knowing the complete truth of any
moment. There is simply no way of knowing what's going on behind the scenes in both our
minds nor the emotional or climatic context affecting us both at the time. You can only see
action and hear sound. Which means I can never accurately visit that memory again.

This particular childhood memory is both poignant and pertinent; whether it

happened the way I remember or whether it didn't, it is thanks to this memory that I
understand better now how memories work. They are not diary entries. That's not what
memory is for. Memory gives us identity but it also protects us from the damage simply
living can do.
Ive made the decision to leave this one where it belongs, in the past, to enjoy the
bits I don't question, even dare I say, enjoy the bits I do (the blaxploitation-man-andL'Oral-woman-walking-towards-me-in-slow-motion-sunlight-behind-them bit, is cool to
replay!). I am thankful that I didn't experience any trauma from it when it first took place,
nor after and shall get on with moving forward into my future happily, as the effective and
downright canny memory system wants me to do.

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Bibliography

Conway, Martin Dr: interview with Louisa Bello, City University, 2 February 2015
Conway, Martin Dr:'Memorable Support for SenseCam Memory-Retention Research'
<http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/news/features/sensecam.aspx > 1997 [accessed
4March 2015]
Kirwan CB, Ashby SR, Nash MI: 'Remembering and imagining differentially engage
the hippocampus: a multivariate fMRI investigation.' Cog Neurosci. 2014;5 (3-4):177-85,
Epub 2014 June 26
Knies, Rob: 'Memorable Support for SenseCam Memory-Retention Research' Microsoft
Research, November 26, 2007 4:00 PM PT <http://research.microsoft.com/enus/news/features/sensecam.aspx> [accessed 10 April 2015]
Loftus, Elizabeth Dr: 'Creating False Memories', Scientific American, September 1997,
Vol 277 #3 pages 70-75
Loftus, Elizabeth Dr: 'The Fiction of Memory', TedTalk presentation
<http://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_loftus_the_fiction_of_memory?language=en >
[accessed 10 January 2015]
Loveday, Catherine Dr: Serial- Your mind can play tricks on you here's how,' The
Conversation <http://theconversation.com/serial-your-memory-can-play-tricks-on-youheres-how-34827> [accessed 10 January 2015]
Wilde, Oscar:'The Importance of Being Earnest' Act II. Plays. Harmondsworth:
Penguin, 1978. N. pag. Print.

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