On the tip of your tongue is not the right expression for a memory that just won’t materialise, I find. When I am trying to remember something and strain the brain to get the word to emerge, I don’t sense anything on the tip of my tongue. I sense it in my brain, slowly but inexorably pushing towards my consciousness. I imagine a grey or light brown brain and this smudge pushing itself painfrully out. It’s a little like a particularly recalcitant turd that won’t be rushed. You just have to wait for it to come. Some coffee might coax it out. The obtuse word will materialise the next day when you’re not even looking for it. I wonder if there are acts you can accomplish to hurry a word out. Straining to think hard about it doesn’t help. You start making fruitless leaps of the imagination. You imagine it starts with a certain letter and go cavorting up a barren path.
Today I was trying to remember a French translation I once found for the idea of Hammer horror, that is to say the gruesome world of gothic melodrama. I knew I had once found a nice equivalent for it. Gradually it came to the surface, revealing more and more facettes as it emerged. It was a word somehow connected with marionettes and theatre. I kept worrying at it and it came to me. Grand guignol. That was it. I felt I had willed the word out of the brain. There was no tip of the tongue about it.
peoplearerubbish 