I started this song based on the line “She had outlived her memory of me”. The writing was basically driven by experience with my mother’s dementia combined with one of my greatest fears. In the final analysis i decided to write it in the first person about an imagined old couple. I guess it falls into my “Blacks” category (as opposed to Blues).
When i first started writing, i thought of the title as “Fragments of Memory”. But as i got further into it, i realized that the tale suggested the opposite of Dali’s title “Persistence of Memory” (one of the first titles that i remember noting in my life); hence, i chose the word “Transience”. I have since renamed it to “Memory of Us”. I think that should do it.
I sang it at a music retreat/workshop run by Jack Williams and the duet Still on the Hill. I broke down at the last two lines from an emotional upwelling; the memory of my mother’s dementia is still very much with me.