Memory Palace Experience

Alright, so, I was not exactly excited when, at 1:30 pm on Saturday I remembered that I had to have the Top 100 Memorized by Tuesday. Yikes! Panic is probably the best description of my feelings at that moment. I sat down then and there to construct my palace and begin what I was sure would be an arduous journey to remember 100 book titles and their ranking position.

However, I actually ended up loving it! Not only does the method work (doubters MUST try it) , but I found myself actually enjoying the process of making associations between places/things and the books in the list. For example, there is a hallway in my home with a portrait of me and my two sisters displayed prominantly. That portrait is #43 Midnight's Children. Cupid and Psyche sit in the transom above the upsaitrs bathroom to remind me of The Golden Ass. I lead my sister through my palace and she loved it. I wish I had known of thi technique sooner! I might have gotten better test scores in Science classes.

Anyway, it works and it's awesome! Can't wait to hear about everyone else's experiences!

Re: Exam #1

Well...the first test was more difficult than the exams of Children's Lit but, it was okay. I think that the most difficult part for me, like most everyone else, was the section about the Ong's 9 most important ideas. I could not figure out which things went with each other. I guess that I just don't have the memory that is needed to be able to visualize the pages and answer questions. In preparation for the exam I memorized the 9 ideas and gave them each a brief definition, but the application of the examples to the terms was difficult for me. Oh, well. I am thankful and appreciative to Shaman Sexson for making the essay part extra credit. That will boost us all up a little bit. :O)

Anyhow, I hope that my notes were of some help to those of you who used them. If there's something that I can do differently please let me know. We are a community of learners after all.

If you have not read Allison's conspiracy theory entry about this class, go do it! http://oraltraditions.blogspot.com It is funny and enlightening to our current situation. Excellent thinking my friend. Thank you for letting us in on the secret.

Flyting

We talked about Flyting a long time ago but I was just reading Courtney's journal which included the EXCELLENT scene with Peter (aka Robin Wiliams) and Rufio. Great example!

I remember in high school that my teacher gave us an assignment to "flyt" with each other using only Shakespearean insults. It was really fun! There was one that I'm not sure if she made up or if it's from a play, but you tell someone that he has "hirsute, pediculous, clarty oxters". Figure out what that means. :O)

Here are some more of Shakespeare's insults from http://www.pangloss.com/seidel/Shaker/index.html? Visit here from more great flyting lines.

*Thou errant folly-fallen whey-face!
*Thou caluminous beetle-headed nut-hook!
*Thou art not so big as a round little worm
*Thou puking unchin-snouted malcontent!
*Show your sheep-biting face, and be hanged an hour!
*O lilliterate loiterer!
*Hence, horrible villain, or I'll spurn thine eyes like balls before me; I'll unhair thy head, Thou shalt be whipp'd with wire, and stew'd'in brine, smarting in lingering pickle.
*Thou goatish beetle-headed harpy!
*Thou bawdy swag-bellied death-token!
*Thou art a very ragged wart.

Good stuff, eh? I think that Shakespeare's insults could rank right up there with the best of them.

Another TESTIMONIAL :O) to the power of EJournal

People not from our classes actually read our thoughts!!!! I have gotten 7 comments on my posts this semester, mostly regarding the Salman Rushdie lecture saying how lucky we are to be able to go and asking for a summary of what happens at the talk. One guy asked about a post I made regarding Literate Presuppositions and said he "enjoys reading" my blog. That's so cool. I was surprised to see that there are others interested in my words. So keep writing profound thoughts...perhaps you will make a connection with someone.

Salman Rushdie on Memory

I was looking through some of the links to Rushdie sites that classmates have in their journals and came across an interview at http://www.subir.com/rushdie/uc_maps.html.

In response to the question of how he prepares himself to write Rushdie replies:

I think I relied mostly on memory. I spent a long time just kind of excavating my memory and the memories of other people. And when there were errors in the remembering, I found I quite liked that, because I didn't want to write something that had journalistic truth but rather some- thing that had a kind of remembered truth. And of course memory does plan those tricks. For instance -- this is something that Indian readers catch at once -- at one point Ganesh is described as having sat at the feet of Valmiki and taking down the Ramayana, which of course he didn't. There are a lot at mistakes like that: they are consciously introduced mistakes. The texture of the narrative is such that it almost depends upon being an error about history; otherwise it wouldn't be an accurate piece of memory, because that's what narrative is, it's something remembered.

I was soo excited when I read this! Obviously, memory and stories have been a huge part of Rushdie's writings. I especially like that he discusses the fallibility of memory. That it can never be truly perfect; that the only way to accuratly portray memory is to include the forgotten or misremembered moments. His mention of the idea of a "remembered truth" also intrigued me. It reminds me of Plato's theory about our pre-birth expanse of knowledge. Plato argues that we know everything before we were born and that we forget it when we enter this world. Rushdie seems to be alluding to a similar idea that there are some truths that all people, in all situations know at some level. The question becomes, do they remember?

Rushdie also mentions one of our favorite people as an influence in his writing. :O) It seems that Joyce has given Rushdie confidence to try things that other, less talanted, authors may not have the assurance to do.

As for other influences, well, there's Joyce, for a start... And Joyce, because Joyce shows you that you can do anything if you do it properly.

Oral Culture as Homeostatic

One of the 9 Characteristics of orally based thought and expression is that it is Homeostatic, in other words, that the holders of knowledge (mythtellers, elders, etc) take out information that is no longer relevant to the situation of the community. For example, if I were telling a story that had previously included information about what it was like during prohibition, I might amend the story because prohibition no longer exists as a national statute across our country. (I can't think of a better example right now) In Ong's words, "oral societies very much live in a present which keeps itself in equilibrium...by sloughing off memories which no longer have present relevance" (46). This got me thinking. I am also majoring in History and most people who study history (and even some who don't) would agree that the point of studying the past is to learn about where we came from, how we came from that place and time to the one we are in now, and where we may be headed in our future. Where, then, do oral cultures draw the line at what is "worthy" of being held on to and what is not?

Some people out there hold the view that history often simply reminds us of the evil in mankind rather than teaching us the reasons to avoid that evil... is an oral culture's history like this? Does it keep memories of good times and reject the bad? or does it keep the bad in order that a lesson might be learned from it? It seems to me from the myth tales that I have read thus far in Kane's book, that the histories and memories of oral people are of the bad things. The tales are didactic and therefore remain relevant.

Ong's discussion of word meanings in this context are quite interesting. The Oxford English Dictionary is FULL of word meanings that we are rarely even aware of, let alone using. I suppose that for a print culture, the meanings of these words must be kept and catalogued so that when we go back to a 15th century text we can make sense of it in its own context. Oral cultures have no use for this because the word is only present as it is being said. After that, it is gone and cannot be referenced.


*My notes http://oraltraditionsnotes.blogspot.com

Class Notes

I've started a new blog site reserved for notes. Check them out if you like. Sorry if anything is confusing...I don't always write everything down. :O)

http://oraltraditionsnotes.blogspot.com

Genealogy...What's fun about Leviticus?

My mom is also a genealogy nut. I think that her interest in genealogy stems from the fact that our family background is so newly American, yet, we know very little about when or why the journey from Norway took place. My mom has traced her family roots back to the 16th century but hasn't had time to do the Newman side yet. Although it seems like a goofy thing to spend, literally, days in a library or church pouring over documents, when the searching is for information about your own ancestors there is a level of excitement and fun in it. My family genealogy is truly MY story in a context that is much more comprehensible than saying that the Bible and all of time is also my story. To have names and places and dates attached to that history adds a dimension of reality to the story of my family. Besides, my mom doesn't use the "begat"s in her rendition of the family history. :O)

Don't forget!!!!

Go get your SALMAN RUSHDIE tickets!!!!

He will be here on Monday March 7th

and the Leadership Institute is expecting

tickets to sell out quickly. Get them while they last!

Top 100 revisited...

So, I'm a slacker. I still haven't really attempted my memorization. I think that I need to get a few more distractions out of my mind before I devote my self fully. But I've been wondering whether it would be better for me to use my home in Alaska as my "palace" or the home that I live in now. In some ways I think that having to reconstruct the old home may make the memorization easier because I'll be engaged in remembering details to begin with. On the other hand, I don't remember the house as well as the one I'm in now and this new house is bigger with more nooks and crannies. I think that I'm going to try my current house first and actually walk through it and make the associations with loci as I go. I hope I have as easy a time with it as Jennifer did. :O)

Marginalia

A few weeks ago in class we brought up the subject of marginalia and how, perhaps, reading a used book with highlighter already in it, underlines, and notes in the margins can screw one up in her reading of a text. I found this conversation interesting for a couple of reasons. First, I always write in my books. I write margin notes; I write in the front covers; I underline; I circle and box around things that I think are important. (I do not, however, underline. It's too difficult to write with a highlighter.) I think that reading a used book can be a help and a hindrance depending on the previous owner's intelligence and her book-writing-in habits. If there are only a few marks and underlines, it often doesn't bother me. But, I do think that every mark that is made in a book becomes a part of the text. It reminds me of the deconstruction tenet that any conversation about let's say Orality and Literacy become a text in itself to be closely analyzed. I find often that if I am reading a text that has been written in by a stranger, I ponder their markings. To mark in the text is to put precedence of one piece of information over another. Sometimes that screws me up. Maybe I don't think the sentence that Kaitlin marked with a star is particularly important or interesting...it's already marked and now I have to think about why.

I found Dr. Sexson's story about a conversation in the margins interesting because, while I think I have some intelligent thoughts in my marginalia, I am slightly uncomfortable with the idea of letting people read my copies of books if they are all marked up. Those are usually my initial responses, questions, and epiphanies and, to me, those seem pretty personal. I don't go back and erase or scratch out those initial markings so, even if my ideas have evolved, the original ideas are still in my text.

In a way then, isn't text changeable? To change a text would, of course, mean passing along the same book from person to person, but if the marginalia are to be counted as a part of the text, perhaps the words in books are not quite as concrete as we thought.

Go Jennifer!

I was just reading Jennifer's account of her Memory Palace experiment...great job! I'm going to start tonight!!!

Hmmm

I was reading Sophie's journal and I checked out the other top 100 lists that she had linked there. I think it's really interesting to think about the reasons why our book list is so drastically different from Harvard's and why Harvard's is so different from the BBC's. Only one of the 4 lists I looked at included any of the ancient Greeks and that was the list by the Harvard Bookstore and all it included was the Aeneid and Iliad. There was no mention in any of the others about Sophocles, Aeschulys, or Homer's Odyssey. I find that strange. Also, Shakespeare was only included in one list and ONLY Henry IV was listed; none mentioned the Bible. Finnegan's Wake was 77 on the Modern Library's "Board" list. The "Readers" list did not include it at all. I think that Ulysses is the only piece that is on every list as well as ours. I find it fascinating that our version of the "Top" books is so different from other communities around the world. Why is Finnegan's Wake in our top 10 when only one other list deems it worthy to even be included? And why does every other list but ours include The Heart is a Lonley Hunter by McCullers and Huxley's Brave New World? I suppose that these are questions that really can't be answered, but, I think that they are interesting to ponder anyway. I think that as I become more connected with our Top100 through my memorization I will begin to see changes that I would like to make to our list.

Top 100 Memory

I'm not quite sure that the slideshow from Tuesday's class will help me. I think that I may need to look up other pictures to help me remember. It was an interesting excersize nonetheless. I was astounded by Justin's story technique and found myself remembering his story throughout my day. I don't know that that method will work for me because I won't be able to remember what part of the story comes next but I've been trying out my "memory palace" and I think I can do it. I'm excited to be able to impress my friends/family at my brilliance. :O) Good luck all on your memory journey.

So many texts...so little time...

In keeping with our discussion of literacy, I am going to begin a list of texts that Dr. Sexson mentions/passes aroud during class. Every text that he brings up has relevance with what we are doing in this course and will be helpful at the end when we are writing term papers and doing presentations. This list will be updated as necessary so check back often for new titles! :O)

BOOKS
The Singer of Tales Albert Bates Lord
The Gutenburg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age Sven Birkerts
The Alphabet Versus the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image Leonard Shlain
Secular Scripture Northrop Frye
The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci Johnathan D. Spence
The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture Mary J. Carruthers, Alastair Minnis
History as an Art of Memory Patrick H. Hutton
Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man Marshall McLuhan
Metaphors of Memory Douwe Praaisma
Learn to Remember Dominic O'Brien
The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man Marshall McLuhan
The Songlines Bruce Chatwin
The Mwindo Epic from the Banyanga Biebuyck

ESSAYS/PAPERS
Re-Membering Finnegan: James Joyce's Masterpiece in the Age of Cyberspace Michael Sexson
Beyond the Orality, Literacy Dichotomy: James Joyce and the Prehistory of Cyberspace Donald Theall
The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction Walter Benjamin

MOVIES
Farenheit 451
Memento
Until the End of the World
The Story of the Weeping Camel
Walk About
Dead Man
Coffee and Cigarettes
8 Mile (flyting)


Google any of these for more info. Also visit http://www.law.pitt.edu/hibbitts/or-lit.htm for more papers/books/courses devoted to the Orality Literacy subject.