Thinking about time, memory and Back to the Future

This week a lot of people have been talking about the movie "Back to the Future"  which was a sweet film that I am sure could not be made today.  It was light entertainment, with serious themes of dealing with bullies and struggling with identity, but I have a real problem with the whole idea of going back in time and changing the past.  Here it is;  if you successfully went back in time and changed it, wouldn't that change be all you knew, so there would be no difference in the future you knew?  I mean, your being there made certain things happen and the progression of time would be as you knew it in the future.  Does that make sense?  And while I loved the movie, that thought occurred to me , when he arrives back in the 1980's that it should have been no different than the one he left because he had already done that in the past.

There's a line in a Jackson Browne song "while the future's there for anyone to change, still, you know, it seem it would be easier sometimes to change the past"  A lot of people change the past.  They reinvent their history or history in general, telling a story over and over until it becomes clearer than the reality.  I recently , jokingly, told one of my oldest friends that we should get together and mis-remember our childhood together. It's funny when you are talking to someone , remembering an event you both were present for and each of you has a distinct, contrary memory of it.  It's pointless to argue with someone when they are so firm in their memory about something.  Sometimes I wonder if my memory is playing tricks on me or that, like my mother, I have Alzheimer's. I don't think I do but sometimes when my mind can't find the right word for something I panic. Watching my brilliant, funny mother fade away bit by bit was probably the most heartbreaking thing I have had to go through.  I miss her terribly these days and wish she were here to talk to. I "talk" to her all the time and sometimes I can hear her, but it's not the same.  I think what I am going through is just age and an inordinate amount of stress, which I am trying to disperse and hopefully in the next few months things will ease up. Phrases from songs that talk about time and patience, reminding me that everything happens in it's own time are resonating with me today. Ecclesiastes 3, which the Byrds turned into a song  reminds me that to everything there is a season and that the past, the present and the future are all tied together.  We are taught that time is linear, but I often wonder if time is an artificial conceit, conceived as a way to keep communities of people organised for survival.

Still at some point, I would like to revisit "Back to the Future" if just to see an old friend long since passed, who is a character actor at the beginning of the film.  I only want to see the first one.  The next two were shameless attempts to recapture the magic of the first one,  In Hollywood, they say " a sequel never equals" but that does't stop them from making them.