Exploring the self-as-memorial through arts-based writing

In 2021, a Cold War Veterans Memorial Commission was announced and immediately, I became interested in this concept. Who are the veterans? What are the memories? And what are the repercussions of giving permanence to this specific history during the post-Cold War era? Writing is the only form I can conceive of for such a memorial, as it allows for a post-structural analysis of memory, experience and life. Writing as a method of inquiry allows one to consider the relationship between personal narrative, materiality and research. In this article, I explore these questions through a braided narrative that weaves together family narratives, historical time periods and imaginings of myself-as-memorial. But like braiding hair, or yarn, some threads become tangled with other threads, representing an entanglement of time and experience, and of individual and collective memories. Not meant to be easily delineated, transitions between narratives are used to evoke the sudden, and sometimes abrupt, emergence of memory. Additionally, by positioning a memorial as a person, questions of the humanness of memory and the nonhumanness of memory objects arise.