The simple fact that listening to music often triggers a memory, usually of a scene in a movie, raises a question. Can writing perform the same memory trigger function that music does?

Other questions rise. What are the triggers that activate memory to remind the reader of a scene, possibly from life itself? Is it possible to craft a scene in a novel in such a fashion that it triggers memory in the reader? The truth is yesno.

Why the vacillation? There is no simple answer. Unlike music that has the ability to trigger a memory bringing up a particluar scene in a movie. Crafting a scene through words can have the same effect, but accomplishing this feat proves much more difficult than strumming a few bars of a song. I want to assure you that this triggering effect can be done. Accomplishing this, however, becomes problematic because the visions that build through the construction of a written scene ask readers to remember something they have experienced. The reader does this, holding that memory in the mind. Then the author has to also craft the scene in such a manner that it triggers the memory. Here we have a memory competing in the mind for space to remember.

Music is memory attempting to activate memory. Thus, unlike the simple music trigger that activates a particular memory, in this case a scene from a movie. A simple one to one ratio. Authors are not so lucky. The strange fact is that the more similar the scene in the book is to the memory the less likely will be the triggering effect. What does the author have to do to activate the trigger? Uncanny comes into play here. The strange, eerie resemblance where the memory is similar but unsettlingly different acts as the catalyst to trigger the memory. Should the scene in the novel be too similar to the memory, then no activation can occur. The mind must become settled before the triggering effect can occur. Only when the scene is skewed enough will the triggering occur. That is why it is called uncanny.

This competition for memory space in its dissimilar nature causes a dissonance that cannot be ignored. It calls out across the plane of the mind, causing it to seek stability when the uncanny dissonance occurs. The placid mind cannot break the surface tension of the liquid pool of memory. Disturbance does occur. This is true. The ripples and waves slowly settle down until equilibrium returns the viscus liquid of memory back into stillness.

Dissonance—Resonance—The Uncanny—These Murmur Triggers ask or demand the reader recall a moment. This activation sends the mind searching hopelessly for stability. Stability is provided only when the mind finds a memory that is similar enough. It is then that balance returns.

Turning to forgetting as caused by old age, dementia, and even Alzheimer’s we see in these people afflicted with these symptoms and diseases this need to remember. They cannot. The trigger has evaporated like ice in the sun, leaving no way to recall to trigger. The strange thing is that if a person is emotionally shocked, then often that person will remember. “Yeah, I remember you. You are my son.” The attempt to force recognition and memory does not work—cannot work. The son cannot say, “You remember me. I am your son.” This rarely works.

The same holds true for the trigger in the novel. The vision of the similar comes into focus when the mind is destabilized. This has a much higher potentiality to effect the re/membering when the scene is scripted in such a manner that it becomes uncanny.