A Summation

First: rock, pen, bunny, moon, seashell

I have found these blogs to be helpful with my learning this semester.  I have always thought that the goal of college courses was not necessarily to learn rote lists of things but to develop my skills as a writer, reader, and thinker.  With this in mind, I have definitely improved my understanding of how my memory works although I should mention that this course also hints to new questions. 

I liked examining the different memory devices of Camillo, Bruno, Lull and Fludd, but I think their attempts to aid in remembering fall well short of their goals.  I would say that Camillo and later Fludd seem to have hit a chord with me being that their devices were based on individual interpretation of an environment.  I kept these designs in mind in choosing the Haufbrau for my musey-room, and I truly believe that knowledge of a physical space is just as important in shaping memories as mental space. But, what I hope to explain in my presentation is that there are fixed items to call memories in the physical space as well as moveable parts which would be the people who come and go from the physical space.  This allows for unlimited combinations of loci to store different information without putting all the emphasis on the memory on one specific item. 

I also liked the Ong text because it alowed me to draw conclusions from various articles of literary theory in terms of memory.  I took Lit 300 a few semesters ago, and I found it very interesting how Ong drew in the work of Derrida and the symbology of language.  My interpretation of this analysis lends not to individual symbols but the interaction between multiple pre-existing mental images and symbols for actual items.  While I like the image of the chinese boxes or russian dolls, I believe mental symbology exists in my mind more like a cooler door at the hauf plastered with bumper stickers.  All the information exists on one planar surface, and each piece is connected to every other piece through a series of movements around and through the other pieces.

I was very impressed with all the presentations this semester, and I think everyone should be commended on the success they exhibited in terms of their ability to remember a lot of information.  I liked how many of the musey-room presentations displayed not only reflections of actual places but drew inspiration from imagined sources. 

Musey-Room: Haufbrau edition

For my final presentation I chose to build a model of the Haufbrau, or atleast a partial one and try to explain how this space operates as my musey room.  I described in an earlier post how I organized the muses in this environment which was merely a spark of inspiration for my most recent project. 

In considering this project, I first thought I would make a make of the entire town and try to fill in parts of it that were significant to me.  Not only did this task seem extremely difficult to approach, but was also found to be time consuming, complex, to intricate to explain in ten minutes.  The Haufbrau proved similarly difficult because of the detail and abundance of information contained in the space. 

While the structure is real and tangible, the memories and information that it enlivens in my mind is almost inexplicable without being there and allowing me to slowly reveal.  Something as simple as playing a game of pool brings on waves of memories that require non-linear explination because of all the memorable games and conversations that surround that one spot in the bar.  For instance, I could tell you about how to shoot a certain shot by recalling previous games I played. Or, I could tell you about a conversation I had about fixing a car I had with Stillman. Or, about how to gamble at the game. I could even talk to you about music, and how I got a job one time by playing a guy on that table.

I can accomplish similar feats with just about any point in the bar.  For instance, if someone asked me what a palindrome is I will simple say, "rats live on no evil star," just as is written in the women bathroom stall.  In fact, there has been years of advice and information painted over in both bathrooms.  Same with the words carved in the table tops.

Every year they put out one new table and store the old one away somewhere.  The bar used to be the primary hangout for college kids and the graduating class of each year got a table.  Many of the old tables still hang on the ceiling and walls proudly displaying the names of ghosts.  It is always funny when some stranger comes in trying to find the name they etched years before.  The usual question to ask is how much the hauf has changed, and the answer is usually, "not much."  And, chances are if you ask who they knew there you can trace from then to now through about 2 or 3 people. 

The only problem I can see with this memory system might be that it doesn't only exist in the concrete environment of the physical world but as a semblance of individual consciousnesses.  Each person holds bits and pieces of the puzzle which comprise all of the knowledge in world.  In order to know everything, you must first meet and know everyone.

Modern Oral Tradition: A story of a story

I am a story teller.  Somehow over the ages that term has come to mean liar.  I do not agree unless you are a liar who also happens to tell good stories, at which point, who cares! I would much rather here an interesting, false story than a broing, true one.  Well... unless the story is actually meant to hurt someone.

      Anyway, so one day my dad decided he was going to clean the basement and "get rid of all the junk" (ha! yeah right).  Usually these projects involve him taking things down, looking through them all, putting them back where they were, and sweeping the floor.  Well, he had picked up a stereo from a friend of his so he could listen to his records while he worked on his cars (as if he ever had time for that) and since he stores all his cars in their daylight, 4 car-garage, basement he had to pull out all his records to see if the record player worked.  It didn't, but he re-discovered his old record player buried on a shelf and tried it out. It still worked! And, my dad got real excited when he found his favorite album from high school: Montrose by Montrose. 
      He was like a little kid as he dropped the needle on the song Bad Motor Scooter! Now, I have never seen my father dance, and I don't know if that's what you could call what I saw, but that's really the only way to describe it.  I just laughed and started upstairs and when I opened the door to the kitchen my mom stopped washing the dishes, stood stock still and said, "Montrose, Montrose, Bad Motor Scooter."
      I asked her, "What?"
      She said, "That song... Montrose, Montrose, Bad Motor Scooter," and then explained to me how when she and my dad were just out of high school they took a trip to the beach and the eight-track player jammed. They listened to that song on repeat for the 4 hours to the beach, the entire weekend they were there, and the 4 hour drive back. When my dad finally got it unjammed my mom took it and threw it away!
     After hearing this story, I knew exactly what I was getting my dad for christmas.

Song from childhood

Me and my band recently played an 80's tribute at the Filling Station.  We had a great time but the subject of this blog is about the selection of the songs we were going to play. 

Are group is rather interesting in age range and each of our tastes in music is surprising different from the others.  Dan is in his 30's, Eric is just 24, and I am coming up quick on 28.  This means we all experienced the 80's in different ways.  I remember rocking out to all the cheesey tunes in my mom's chevy corsica, Dan was in school, and Eric was a baby so his knowledge is all in retrospect.  We entertained playing a lot of different songs from Heuy Lewis and the News, the Police, The Ramones, and numerous others, but here is the list we settled on:

Melt with You by Modern English
Monkey Gone to Heaven by the Pixies
In the Air Tonight by Phil Collins
Tomorrow Wendy by Concrete Blonde
Sunday Bloody Sunday by U2
We Didn't Start the Fire by Billy Joel

What surprised me the most about these songs is that I remembered the words to most of them and I haven't heard them in years.  Even weirder was all the other songs we looked at that I knew atleast partial words to, and I spent a considerable amount of time reminiscing about my childhood and other memories these songs triggered.

For instance, when I was seven I could not stop listening the album Invisible Touch by Genesis.  I started playing the songs from the album, as I got distracted, and found I knew almost every line of every song.  My mom had thrown the tape out when I was about 8 or 9 and I hadn't heard it since.

Immediately after listening to the album, my mind went back to when I was that age, just dancing around my parents house with my walkman tape-player full volume.  It reminds me of a story my mom told me one time which I will relate in my next blog.

My Bedroom: complications of moving

I recently moved into a new house and actually considered utilizing it for the final presentation of my musey-room until I decided it didn't hold enough meaning yet.  Anyway, I wanted to relate a few stories I have accrued so far which have tested my memory.

For starters, I am usually very good at remembering where I put things in bags and boxes, but what became puzzling was the why of where things ended up.  For instance, my toothpaste made it in with the dishes but my tooth brush got in with the other toiletries.  Why this differentiation for two things that are requisite of eachother? Well, I missed the toothpaste on the first pass, so I simply threw it in with an open box of dishes. Sounds pretty easy to explain. 

But, what if someone else would have had to unpack my stuff?  They may have been confused when they found socks and scissorrs in the same pocket of the luggage bag which contained my dress shirts and work boots.  I think it would be funny to watch someone try to navigate through all the boxes to re-assemble all my stuff to a logical order in a room. And the strangest part was that I didn't unpack for almost a week, and yet all the strange packing choices I made still stuck in my brain. Car care bled into library, and school and music got all mixed up being that they are used more than almost anything else.  The only items that retained a measurable amount of segregation in the move were those from the kitchen.

Another test of my memory in my new environment came when I miss placed my coffee for about 20 minutes.  I made the coffee, took two sips and set it down.  Then I walked away to get ready to run to school.  (incidently, this is why I have been consistantly late for everything lately)  Inevitably, I walked out of my room and realized I had to change over my laundry, and then it was back to my room to find my sunglasses.  Then, it became, "Where the hell is my coffee! I just had it?" So, it was back to the coffee maker, open the fridge for milk, check the bathroom (no i didn't go in there), living room (don't see it from where I'm standing), back to the kitchen, laundry?... nope. humm... (insert appropriate curse word) Check the time and now I'm late. (explitive) Time? Oh yeah! I had checked the time when I was sitting in my recliner in the living room and I set my coffee on the floor so it wouldn't spill on my computer while I checked today's weather.  Bob's your Uncle, grab the joe, and out the door.

a question

If it is possible to remember everything and everything is a merely a reflection of things that have already occured, aren't we just trying to remember all the different names and re-orderings of the same things? 

A ramble of thoughts:
Humans can only exist in an extremely specific situation. For instance, there are millions of degrees of temperature possible in the universe and we can only survive more than a short duration in a range of about a 100. Everything we do is subject to phenomena of the universe such as gravity. Species may change and evolve on earth randomly, but this whole world is such a delicate balance I don't know how humans ever made it this far.  If you throw on top of that the developement of consciousness, I am surprised I can even remember my name.

Why kids climb trees

I was just thinking about a theory I have about human beings as children and why they have a prevailing desire to climb trees.  I promise there is a relevant point in here somewhere.

A few years ago I started thinking about how kids always seem to be climbing things, and I think it is a hold over from our recent eveolutionary ancestors.  If you think about it, chimpanzees sleep in trees and use elevation to escape from predators.  I believe the desire to climb, especially as a child, is inbourne and necessary to a child's natural ability to survive.  Human legs take longer to develope than their arms, so naturally climbing seems a more resonable response to the threat of predation than running. 

However, and here's my point, even before we can climb we can cry.  While climbing may appear to be the first line of defence, it's not.  We come out screaming.  Crying is therefore the first form of communication humans are equipt with, and strangely wailing is a completely unconscious behavior.  As a child all one has do to communicate a desire is cry.  "I'm hungry. I'm tired. etc." Cry, cry, cry. But when does physical and cognitive ability kick in and make desire of and being given the desired not enough?

As far as I know, science still can't explain how humans develope in terms of speech formation.  There are theories as far as cognitive function being a product of emulation, but the maze that is our brain starts the process of langauge formation unconsciously.  Incidently, some of what Dr. Sexon has been saying is finally sinking in, because to learn we must remember and that means we are remembering things before we are conscious of it.  The pursuit of memories we made before those in our present consciounsess allows us to remember seems interesting, but I think in order to remember those things we would have to de-evolve our brains back to the state of the lost memories.  I think there is probably a connection somewhere that we all have, and that once connected won't allow us to regress. I would guess the key connection resides somewhere between all the senses and the unconscious. 

I just want to add what an older friend of mine told me about drinking alcohol.  He said that people unconsciously desire to be children again, and that drinking basically reduces your cognitive ability to that of a six year old.  I think he may have been on to something...

Cliche

I was just reviewing some of Ong's book and I got hung up on a passage yet again.  Ong states that, "There was no use denying the now known fact that the Homeric poems valued and somehow made capital of what later readers had been trained in principle to disvalue, anamely, the set phrase, the formula, the expected qualifier - to put it more bluntly, the cliche" (23).  I find this statement n accurate critique of modern literature study as well as confusing in terms of popular culture. 

For starters, how is it that music is elevated for it's "catchiness" and "cliche" while literature is broken-down for it's utilizaton of similar devices?  Are literary persons just supposed to be more inventive than to use what affects the reader?  Doesn't the absence of easily accessible terms to the ear of the reader distance author from audience? 

I have the sinking suspicion that if we really examine every work, since they are all rehashings of older works, that everything could be called a cliche.  I can appreciate that as literature students we should push the bounds and scope of the literature we read, but the fact that we still much work inside a system reveals a very Derridian conclusion: nothing is every truly outside the system and specifically the works that profess to do so.  Therefore, I have determined that cliche is nothing if not essential to all human communication and especially communtication which relates memory.  Instead of diminishing cliche devices or phrasing, I personally think there should be some oppurtunity to study the cliche.  Every colloquialism, every introduction or epithet can be interpretted as cliche, and I believe that it is through this seemingly universal relatability that communication is even possible.  If we didn't have anchors to the world and some form of collective unconscious (i.e. brains that functioned similarly while interpreting) it would impossible to relate to eachother.  Cliche seems to tell us more of the foundations or first (historically as well as in terms of conversation starting) thoughts which humans function on to communicate. 

Group Presentation: MAPS

The idea behind our project, atleast in my mind, was to not only relay information from the chapter but to give you guys possible representations of the story.  This class has made me realize that as humans we are constantly trying to gain understanding of the world around us, but the process of relating our findings and interpretations of our understanding are extremely difficult given our limited resources.  These tools of communication are speech, art, and literature and as the various material for the our course have demonstrated they often fall short.  To reiterate my favorite passage from Ong, words are always symbolic of a larger picture that they can never fully express.

The chapter of Maps is important in that it highlights several elements of myth telling which attempt to help shorten the gaps between humans as conscious beings bent on answer finding and the world we live in.  It seems strange to me that the main pursuit of knowledge is to essentially make the universe seem smaller.  However, this chapter highlights, in my mind, the notion that our seeming predispotion toward problem solving creates more issues that need further interpretation.  For instance, my section on the wisdom of plants gives explaination for the seasons and some of the various problems that arise in agrarian society.  These mythological theories for existence combine elements of the physical world with elements of religion or that of a vague, alternative consciousness.  Since there is no definite proof in regards to the other side of consciousness (death, god's grand design) various people's have created characters to interpret this alternate reality such as the crow who can transverse the boundaries between worlds.

It seems strange that by mapping the universe people invariably create, and instead of filling in space cultures invariably create more blank space that needs filled in with more stories.  In the oral tradition, with a lack of physical evidence or concrete preservation, the emphasis is not on the literal interpretation of the universe but what one might call the consciousness of the human experience.  Mapping is representative of but not specifically dependant on actuality. 

Hamlet Production

This post is reserved for my experience acting this semester in a group production of Hamlet for my Shakespeare Lit class.

I will discuss line memorization, public speaking, actor to actor repsonse, as well as character developement.  All of this will center around information from this class and how the memory techniques we discussed have impacted this project. 

A quick note: it is interesting that in this class we speak so much about remembering words but not movements.

The most important thing I learned from this production was that memorizing lines is just like constructing a musey-room.  But, instead of having to imagine all the props in your head, you get to build them and put them in your hands or within eye sight.  I found that the stage directions and set for each scene had a huge impact on my ability to remember my lines.  Interestingly, in the absence of props I had to imagine them in order to remember some lines, and in other instances I had to have the previous characters line in order to remember my next line.

While I was impressed with my ability to remember everything in the play, I find it problematic that there existed a rigid structure or sequence that was necessary for my memory to function effectively.  I further endeavor to examine if this is a commonality in memory or if there is a more flexible strategy for memorization.

traumatic events

I am going to come back and fix all these posts up in the next week or so, but I figured it would be a good idea to get some ideas down first.

We were talking in class about how retelling stories that are painful can diminish the power those memories hold over us.  I got hit by a car when I was 15 but it still seems like I get into a funk after everytime I think about it.  Sure, the memory is not as harsh as it used to be, but I couldn't say if that is a product of exposure or simply a result of the increasing distance between now and then.  I got hit while walking by a car going 35-40 mph and I darn near had panic attachs for about 5 years afterward when trying to cross the street.  I have always thought that by having a memory that could elicite such a physical response was a good thing because it lessened the distance between the brains ability to percieve information, mentally project images (memories), and physically respond.  Sort of a classical conditioning inducing higher function and shortened reaction-recall.  Basically, I would like to find that instant where I realized I was going to get hit with actually knowing it or being hit and tune that in.

Words: fall short vs. speak volumes

I have been thinking a lot about the Ong quotes I have found so far, and the one that seems to stick in my mind the best is:

"Spoken words are always modifications of a total situation which is more than verbal."

This quote gets my mind racing.  I start thinking about foreign languages and how there are some aspects of culture that can't transcend language.  I start thinking about mentally picturing directions as people give them to me.  But, I also think about the comparison of spoken language and written language visualization. 

Last Friday we were discussing how kids acquire langauge skills (well... a little bit, I was thinking about and visualizing my childhood more than anything).  When I was 3 I had everyone in my family convinced I could read for about a day or so.  It was because of one book by a Dr. Seuss called Hop on Pop.  I had had people read it to me so often that I had memorized every word page by page, and since the drawings were depicting the words I had easy cues for recollection.  It took a while but I eventually messed up and was found out.  I find it funny in retrospect that everyone seemed so disappointed that I hadn't actually learned how to read when they could have been equally as impressed that I could memorize all that material.

I still remember a Shel Silverstein poem I had to memorize in 3rd grade too:

"My mother said if just once more
she'd hear me slam that old screen-door,
She'd tear out her hair she'd dive in the stove,
I shut the door and in she dove."