I don’t remember my father’s rage

On traumatic memory and amnesia

November Events Online and in Montreal

November 13 (tomorrow), 6:30 pm, Montreal: book launch for Fucking Magic and L’art oublié de baiser at N’était-ce pas l’été (6792 St-Laurent) featuring Miranda Schreiber and Mélissa Thériault. Plus get my zines for 50% off.

November 15 & 16, 11:30 am to 7pm, Montreal: I’m tabling Expozine all day, both days. I’m also having a huge sale on zines and books. Most titles will be 50% off. Bring cash!

November 22, 12pm EST, online: Is psychiatry obsolete? Join Kelsey Zazanis and Clementine Morrigan for a virtual conversation and Q&A on psychiatric abolition, divesting from the DSM, and building futures beyond pathologization. Together we will unpack the hidden history of psychiatry and its role in the repression and reproduction of incest, sexual abuse, and other social violences. This event will be recorded and the recording will be sent to everyone who got a ticket. Tickets here.

November 23, 1pm, Montreal: talk with Jordan Coulombe of Crooked Fagazine at Espace Zines at Salon du Livre in Montreal.

November 30, 5pm EST, online: I was human after all online book club discussing How to Be Unmothered, with special guest appearance of the author, Camille U. Adams. The only thing you have to do to take part is be a paid subscriber to this substack and read the book. I will send/post the link here a little before the meeting starts. You’ll get to meet the author! So cool.

Other Announcements

I started a 2002 online diary inspired “secret” substack for real fans only. Check it out.

“In the late 90s and early 2000s, when the internet was strange and anonymous, my writing flourished in online diaries. Real ones remember. My writing practice craves a public facing secret diary, with a smaller audience and a little more privacy. With an audience who really wants to be here and is unafraid of being spammed by the exploratory creative practice of Clementine Morrigan.

This is the b-sides, or the close friends story. It’s not for everyone. Feel no obligation to subscribe. The price is double than a subscription to my main substack and the writing there is better. This is the weird stuff, the stuff I’m trying and exploring. And full disclosure it will be literally whatever I want it to be, with no schedule, no structure, no expectations. Just a space for semi-public writing, like back in the day.”

Also, my episode of Ti leggiamo una femminista came out — “Figlie Mostruose” con Clementine Morrigan.

I don’t remember my father’s rage

On traumatic memory and amnesia

I have always found the idea of recovering memories strange — trying to imagine the imposition of a past that a moment ago did not exist. Like a lot of survivors I wondered if there was more that I couldn’t remember. The truth is that there is a lot of my childhood that I simply do not remember. I remember the broad strokes and there are key specific moments that I remember. But the rest of it is a fog. And even the stuff I remember, it’s like I remembered to remember it. Like in the haze of all that forgetting I did something special to hold onto these memories even as everything around them disappeared and much of their details were hollowed out.

It’s funny — I remember the bathing suit I was wearing when my grandfather forced his tongue into my mouth. It was yellow with a pattern of white flowers. It was wet because I had just come back from the lake where my little sister and grandmother were on the pedalboat which was filling with water. I swam back and sent my dad after them in the canoe. I remember the yellow bathing suit. I remember his words Give us a kiss. I remember my thoughts: be respectful, go to him, like dad says. I remember the desperate need to repress my disgust, my desire to fight or run, my certainty of danger. I remember that the motivating factor in overcoming my inner defence system and submitting to an incestuous pedophile was a desire to be good in my father’s eyes. I remember that I was brainwashed, that I was trained. I remember the strength of my grandfather’s arms, the force of his tongue, his greasy stubble, the feeling of him entering my mouth, the panic, ears ringing, the lucidity in his eyes when he said: Come back here. I won’t do that again.