Memory palaces and places - Moonwalking with Einstein

Moonwalking with Einstein: the Art and Science of Remembering Everything
by Joshua Foer

1. pickled garlic
2. cottage cheese
3. salmon (peat smoked if poss.)
4. white -------------------------------------- six bottles of white wine
5. 3 hola hoops ------------------------------ socks (x3)
6. socks 2x ---------------------------------- 3 hola hoops (spared?)
7. -------------------------------------------- snorkel
8. -------------------------------------------- dry ice machine
9. email to Susan ----------------------------- email to Sophia
10. ------------------------------------------- skin toned cat suit
11. find the Paul Newman movie - someone up there likes me
12. ------------------------------------------- elk sausages??
13. megaphone in director's chair
14. ram steak --------------------------------- harness ropes
15.-------------------------------------------- barometer

well, this list was a supposed to-do list the author used to learn from his mentor (Ed Cooke) and to illustrate in the book the techniques of submitting something (and everything) to memory.  I grasped the principles as I read along and could remember 14/15 after finishing the chapter (1:30 am, 10/21/2011). with a few minor mistakes. 6:30 am in the morning, i recounted all 15 of the items with ease (not counting minor mistakes).  i hadn't thought of it since.

now, almost one month later, the list is no long crispy in my min: I barely managed half of it. with significant effort to recall the missing ones to no avail. and with quite a few mixed-ups. and crumbs here and there: only white is left with six bottles of white wine.

the basic techniques are simple enough. the first step is to build one's memory palaces (in my case, it can be appropriately called "a place", one place), where everything is in unforgettable order and they serve as your own signposts. next is to hang whatever you want to remember to each of those signposts in order. for this, you have to first create an image of the thing to remember and then assign that image to the signpost to make them inseparable.  now things to remember become things to visualize with association. according to the teaching, the best palaces are places you've lived: childhood home, familiar neighborhoods, grandparents' houses, train stations ....

for someone as disoriented as me, this kind of palaces are impossibility compared to whatever I have to remember. so for my practice, not done with serious effort, i used the Chinese zodiac: a tiny place with 12 animals called for my service: rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, ram, monkey, chick, dog, pig. since there were 15 items in the laundry list, I reused the first 3 animals:

my rat hang a picked cucumber jar on his neck; but it is not cucumbers, but white garlic. next.

my ox got the cottage cheese. he was puzzled: cheese belongs to the rat. done (it helped also, i am sure, that i associated the first two items this way).

my tiger fights with salmon (it looked more like an alligator as I just Haggard's She).

checking back to what's retained, memory is about hardworking, time, concentration and repetition. i can see this technique powerful, but the effort is insignificant.  my original insincere objective was to memorize the card deck so that i could show off at imagined parties of future. for that, i must build a much larger memory palace and I must have 52 unique images of subject-action-object. then i have to practice, practice, practice... now the question becomes "do i have better things to busy myself with?"

it is certainly a book worth reading. i have learned something unforgettable: not the laundry list, which is now back in my memory again, but the impressive memory techniques and principles. so I've acquired knowledge, if not skills.  it chewed up a significant chunk of the mystery regarding "photographic memory", which I always find fascinating. many small stories are quite fun to read. however, i also find this book itself slightly superficial. it is well researched, yet lacks the authenticity of true knowledge and passion. the writing is bland, too. the best part is Foer's skepticism and investigation of one of the so-called "high functioning savants" (Daniel Tammet). anyway, i could envision a far better book on the same topic, of the same style.  Stefan Fatsis's Word Freak came to mind. with all this and that, however, this is a book hard to forget.

A heavy-handed portrait of an artist

The Moon and Sixpence
by W. Somerset Maugham

He was a stock broker, and a good husband with a lovely wife and beautiful kids. He turned 40. He abandoned his family to become an artist. His art works were strange, other-worldly and eventually recognized as the touches of a genius.

Maugham must have been fascinated and puzzled by the incredible life story of Gauguin. To comprehend, he recreated a fictional version of him.  The moon and sixpence is really a rational depiction of pure artistic temperament, as exemplified by the reclusive artist. Having made myself fairly familiar with the biographical facts before hand, I did not find Maugham's portrait to coincide with my own impression of Gauguin.  I even liked "the real thing" better. However, I was not at all disappointed with the book.  Maugham was a very good story teller and able to make his thoughts and reasoning interesting by vivid characters and plausible plots.  And his appreciation of art and artists is genuine and touching.

can't go wrong; hard to add much - to the immortal Michelangelo

The Agony and The Ecstasy
by Irving Stone

this is the very popular "biographical novel" of Michelangelo. it was not poorly written and did add texture to the usual sketches of his life. however, Michelangelo's life was no ordinary life; it was full of astonishing achievements and never short of drama, all of which meticulously documented and recounted over and over. having already visited Rome to "witness" his artworks and read several books and numerous articles about him, i found it hard to get excited about the little stories made up by the author beyond the "authentic facts" i had already become familiar with. it would be a fun book for someone who enjoys an easy read and has only started to learn this amazing genius.