The Camembert of Time (an early draft from 20 years ago)

To demonstrate the persistence of memory Dali took an ice cube out of the freezer & closed his fingers over it. When he opened them there was a small pool of water in his palm. He said: you remember the piece of ice. I feel its retained coldness & recall some frames from a movie I made with Buñuel. A man’s hand. A hole in it. Ants.

Time is plastic, just like these watches. Why we remember some things & not others is because they come closer to us. The cliffs of Catalonia are static but the ants will eat away at them & eventually they’ll decay. I lie here, unable to remember what I looked like. The painting is about the impermanence of memory, & yet most people who’ve seen it always seem to remember what it looked like.