SONG: “Forget.”
ARTIST: grant.
SOURCE: Based on “Manipulating memory with light: Scientists erase specific memories in mice“, Science Daily, 9 October 2014, as used in the post “We can un-remember for you, wholesale. (With light.)”
ABSTRACT: It’s oblivion season here at the Guild, I guess. Happens every so often… a rash of songs about forgetting.
This song is built on the bones of a Portuguese folk song called a fado menor, or something like it. (I don’t have a guitarra Portuguesa, and didn’t feel up to faking it this go-round. And thought it sounded OK as it was.)
It’s supposed to be a song about someone – maybe a grieving parent, maybe an abusive spouse, maybe a jilted lover – pleading (or haranguing) a doctor to edit out a sad young woman’s traumatic memories. As far as I can tell, fados menor were originally sung either by sailors pining for loves back home, or women by the docks pining for their missing mariners. There’s some missing going on, at any rate.
The research seems kind of like that – a little ambiguous, slightly nostalgic or sad, slightly caring (it’s deleting trauma!) and just a little bit creepy.