Los Angeles based artist and cultural critic Norman Klein has exhibited works around the world, teaches at California Institute of the Arts, and has authored several books including "The History of Forgetting: Los Angeles and the Erasure of Memory". In 2008, Director of Integrated Media at Cal Arts and founder of Viral Net Tom Leeser asked Norman Klein to compose a narrative that could reside 'within' Drew Denny's Brain House. Click here to view.

In 2009, a patient named David G. (surname withheld) was treated unsuccessfully at a leading hospital in Southern California. Clearly, nothing is "leading" about this hospital anymore. The staff was so depleted by cuts, so demoralized, their symptoms were easier to read than David's. David's case was filed as "perverse memory loss; philo-amnesia." Perverse was slang at the hospital for "much too rare." No one thought to dig beyond the obvious. For example, in fourteenth century Spain, there are medieval texts, based on the Jewish Talmud, where contradictions quite similar to David's were treated (usually with prayer). These Sephardic case studies were converted to Catholic Spanish as early as 1460; and translated into English as recently as 1989, in Antwerp.

Anyway, we won't drown you in details. Simply put, David lost his memory stream. He could not reboot memories in sequence. Instead, he spouted aphorisms, even while events were going on.

As a result, he looked inscrutable, with a detached smile. But actually no lights were on. Like a man possessed in a crime movie, he kept dropping clues. Did he know more than he said? His aphorisms were even grammatical. Inside a normal brain, these clues were mnemonic—tag lines. Inside David, they circled like unclaimed luggage. They sparked nothing but highly cinematic close-ups.

The staff was too exhausted to track this one down. They left David with a manila pad and three crayons (no sharp pencils were permitted). On a diet of jello, microwaved burritos, and buttered toast, David fended for himself. After six weeks, his stomach lining sorely needed help. He was given two doses of antibiotics and new crayons.

On the memo pad, David left twenty five sentences in crayon (rather ornately illustrated by another patient). Each aphorism was numbered afterward by a nurse, who proudly filed them, whereupon they were almost immediately lost.

[The aphorisms are hidden in the Brain House above. Look for links to find them. –Ed.]