“In Western thought, the conscious being is often divided into two parts: mind, and body. Senses, and thoughts. Perception, and memory. It seems every conscious thought is rooted in either instantaneous perception or recall. What, then, can be said about a person’s soul if one side of that duality is completely destroyed?” asks Alex Quirk.
Deborah Wearing Enters, the second track of Alex Quirk’s first EP, Looking Up, explores the concept of instantaneous perception through consummate layers and resonant loops, telling stories of love and learning inspired by the unique life of Clive Wearing.
The video is a visual thought experiment.
It feels like an honest recollection, offering moments of clarity through altered perspective: sunlight entwined with lamplight, motion out of sequence. Clive Wearing’s consciousness is not tethered in the way the rest of ours is. In his amnesia, there is implied conviction that what he sees, feels, and says then and there, is true. That “truth” fades from his existence forever, in seconds.
His experience is enclosed in the present; one could hardly even imagine that as our reality. In our experience, the rest of us relive what we can recall of our lives and loves, again and again, perhaps under the pretense that those memories carry any promises or prescriptions for the future. The present is rarely better; to ascribe permanence to particular moments of instantaneous perception is literally illogical, yet innately human. So in Clive’s case, and in our own, where does meaning come from? As Quirk asks, what can be said about a person’s soul if one side of the mind-body duality is destroyed?
This is where Deborah Wearing Enters.
In his state, Wearing’s wife Deborah is the only human being he recognizes- and enthusiastically greets at every opportunity. That is when he and Deborah share in familiarity and love safe from the amnesia-induced void always a few moments behind him.
Alex Quirk’s visual thought experiment and musical homage to Clive and Deborah Wearing is simultaneously moving and grounding. It takes on that void; it’s a testament to what Clive is reliving through those seconds of clarity with Deborah, definitive of his experience though well beyond articulation.
