Mnemonic Soul Searching

After cracking open a "thinking beer" and throwing on some Ziggy Marley (it is Friday after all I wanna think in a relatively relaxed condition), I sit down and type away at this blog entry because of a couple of undeniably powerful passages spilled out of The Art of Memory chapter 2 like a 4 man beer-bong filled a bit too high. (like I said its friday)  

Beginning on page 33, Yates argues the location of the capability of memory through the writings of Aristotle.  Essentially, "Memory ... belongs to the same part of the soul as the imagination" (33)  The foundational phenomenon of the human mind, memory, intertwines itself with the most foundational human thought, imagination, argues Aristotle as well as Yates.  Because memory is basically a series of mental pictures it cannot exist without the capability to develop these pictures.  The imagination is the "one-hour photo processing center" for the memory.  It seems to reason the biologically hardwired tendency for children to "make believe" derives from the necessity to develop these two coexisting brain functions.  Interestingly, as I write this blog, I am receiving a rush of memories from playing "make-believe" as a kid.  I vividly remember being Rafael from the Ninja Turtles, and Luke Skywalker and Wedge Antillies from Star Wars.  These memories come not from actual events that occurred in the "real" world but from a world I created in my imagination.  Besides the first time I played with fire and my favorite childhood tree to climb, these memories of "make-believe" stick out more clearly than real world events like my first day of school.  Children must play "make-believe" as a form of stimulation to hardwire the memory function into the brain, while at the same time, as Aristotle and Yates contend, they build the epicenter of memory and imagination ... the soul.  This observation was only the beginning of the delightful nuggets hidden in Chapter 2.  Aristotle was not the only one arriving at the Memory-Soul connection, Plato saw memory as the foundation to Rhetoric, the subject he emphasized his entire life

The Phaedrus is a treatise on rhetoric in which rhetoric is regarded, not as an art of 

persuasion to be used for personal or political advantage, but as an art of speaking

the truth and of persuading hearers to the truth.  The power to do this depends on a

knowledge of the soul and the soul's true knowledge consists in the recollection of the 

Ideas.  Memory is not a 'section' of this treatise, as one part of the art of rhetoric; memory in the Platonic sense is the groundwork of the whole.

(Yates, 37)

The ability to remember truth as one understands it, the ability to pull that truth from the depths of ones soul, acts as the primary purpose of Rhetoric.  Plato believed that humans came pre-programed with knowledge however the trick became discovering the method to extract the knowledge from locked memories.  The soul, it seems, is an intricate mold of understanding and learning.  One must recreate the cast that created the mold and then continuously reproduce the mold.  If the cast symbolizes memory, and the mold is imagination, then out of the critical relationship examined by Aristotle, combined with the Plato's Rhetoric, comes an emergent sculpture of "truth."  To add a bit more wierd surounding this conceptualization of "truth," this "truth" is inherrant, hardwired into our systems from the moment of birth.  Or perhaps from the "make-believe" we play as children an interesting thought. 

The limits of imagination and memory using the Platonic and Aristotalian view become unfathomable.   Now the memory feats supposedly performed by the scholars of the Middle Ages and the Reniassance become quite feasable.  Why couldn't a person remember a sequence of thousands of places in an unfrequented church.  The information is already internal waiting to be unlocked.  "A power able to bring about such a number of important results is to my mind wholly devine.  For what is the memory of things and words? What further is invention? Assuredly nothing can be apprehended even in God of greater value than this ... Therefore the soul is, as I say, divine, as Euripides dares say, God" (Yates quoting Cicero, 45). 

 While the ultimate power of memory may not rival the power of God.  Memory certainly holds the key to unlocking an unbelievable power in man.  Since I've been a kid, I've always heard a statistic that humans only use 10-15 percent of their brain.  I don't know if that statistic is true or not but if it is, it definitely makes for some food for thought.  What about the other 80%?  I suppose I have stressed the 10-15% of my brain enough for a Friday afternoon and besides, I just finished my beer so I'm going to end there.

The Visually Shredable Memory Theater

Well after much internal debate, I have come up with the location of my memory theatre.  During the past few class periods several people commented on the location of their memory theaters.  The house you grew up in, a family cabin, and a grandparents house all seem great ideas however after reading the second section of The Art of Memory entitled "Memory of the Soul," I feel a memory theater should lye as close to the soul as possible and thus, the solution easily presented itself.  Above almost all else, my soul is one of a ski bum and my fondest memories come from Schweitzer Mountain Idaho.  I grew up on the mountain, raced for the race team, poached countless hot tubs, skiied bottomless powder, spent great time with friends and know just about every inch of the hill.  I still think of Schweitzer as one of the best mountains in the country even after skiing other highly publicized resorts in Colorado, Wyoming and British Columbia.  I remember a extremely intricate and ritualized method of approaching the mountain on every powder day to maximize fresh turns.  Now I need to figure out the 50 things to put in that memory theater.  Although... I could probably remember a couple thousand things with all the distinctive places I picture in my mind.

The power of Speech and Writing

As part of an assignment for Lit Crit 300 last semester, Dr. Sexson assigned me the role of Stanley Fish to research as a literary critic.  I learned an unbelievable amount of information on the man but more importantly, I got in the habit of reading Fish's weakly blog sponsored by the New York Times.  He updates the blog every Sunday and from just a quick read through of some of his entries one instantly understands Genius.  In my personal opinion, Stanley Fish is one of the smartest human beings on the planet.  His blog transcends so much of the bullshit that pervades much of the modern media.  He is clever and directed and an extremely eloquent writer but most importantly he remains (for the most part) politically neutral.  One of my major gripes with society today is the tendency to convert conversation into a political forum.  Fish avoids this completely and in my opinion, offers criticism when needed and praise when merited regardless of the issue or his stance on the issue.  

That being said, Fish's blog entry for this week strikes a chord with our class relating the power of orality and literacy working in coexistance.   In his blog entry from 1-22-09 Fish writes "Barack Obama's inaugural address is proving to be more powerful in reading than it was in the hearing ... It is as if the speech, rather than being a sustained performance with a cumulative power, was a frame work on which a succession of verbal ornaments was hung, and we were being invited not to move forward but to stop and ponder significances only hinted at ... Obama doesn't deposit us at a location he has in mind from the beginning; he carries us from meditative bead to meditative bead, and invites us to contemplate."  

Fish continues by explaining how the speech when listened to seems to flutter by ones brain because of the lack of connecting and directed language.  The speech when heard seems like one be uninterrupted sentence due to lack of conjunctions and structure.  Fish explains how Obama uses a seldom utilized rhetorical strategy called parataxis which places phrases, clauses, and sentences in short suscint order without conjunctions.  The result, a prose style much like the Bible, "the style is incantatory rather than progressive" argues Fish.

Immediately the word Incantatory sticks out.  The short poetic statements are throwbacks to the oral traditions of the primary oral cultures.  More importantly, Obama uses these incantations as the primary body to each of his sections of speech.  The word incantation traditionally associates with magic and spells and thus incantations are usually cryptic and only understandable by a select few in society.  One quick google search for the presidents inauguration speech and thousands of hits and thousands of responses appear.  If nothing else, this speech provoked thought among millions.  This comes as a nice change from the lovable (although mostly hateable) Bush speeches where people were constantly hung up on pronunciation or a slip up followed by a doofy Texas grin.  This new style, whether written by the president or by a team of speech writers, got the collective brain of America and the World turning.  Personally I think this a far superior use of the collective concsiousness to the constant bashing and insulting of the last presidency.  The USA Today has already released a detailed analysis where they record the frequency of words and the use of alliteration according to Fish.  I don't recall a single speech of the past administration that received such truly academic scrutiny.  The beauty of the speech is the simple poetic nature.  One can study the speech like a poem, one line at a time.  

The inaugural address is an interesting crossroads of orality and literacy.  The parataxical oral style threw many people for a loop however the same style reevaluated as a text has created more buzz with each passing day.  Which aspect of the speech is superior is a topic of debate however I think the beauty in the orality is equaled by the intricacy of the text.  My suggestion, watch the inauguration on YouTube, read the transcript of the speech and finally read the blog written by Stanley Fish ... but only on one condition... leave all previous political biases at the door and try to look from strictly a scholarly point of view.  My guess is the excercise will be vastly beneficial to the subject matter at hand.

A little blurb from the speech to illustrate the ideas behind this post.

"Homes have been lost, jobs shed, businesses shuttered.  Our health care is too costly, our schools fail too many, and each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet."

"Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things--some celebrated, but more often men and women obscure in their labor--who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom."

Check it out

YouTube Speech

Written Transcript

A touch of Vulgar

"The new way to store knowledge was not through mnemonic formulas but in written text.  This freed the mind for more original, more abstract thought." (Ong 24).  

I read this line from Walter Ong and can picture a sexually charged high schooler telling me this while winking and nudging my side.  Of all that I have read from Ong, Yeats or Kane.  This line sticks out as one of the most apparent sexualizations of literature.  With the advent of writing came the advent of Erotic literature.  We even have a muse dedicated to the genre.  Some of the earliest instances are the Song of Songs from the Bible and Satyricon of Roman literature.  Now a days we have Harlequin Romances with the likeness of Fabio on the Cover.  Everyday people all over the world get a bit hot under the collar reading this form of literature all thanks to this "freed mind"  capable of more "abstract thought.

The Chinese had the Karma Sutra and in western society we have "The Flame and the Flower" novels writing allowed the development of this genre and thus Ong is obviously vulgar in his above quote.

Cabinets of Curiosity

A little on Cabinets of Curiosity.

Cabinet was originally a word for a room.  The Cabinets were more like really crowded rooms full of preserved specimens of "curiosity"

according to Wikipedia  "three types of item were indispensable in forming a "Kunstkammer" or art collection: firstly sculptures and paintings; secondly "curious items from home or abroad"; and thirdly "antlers, horns, claws, feathers and other things belonging to strange and curious animals"

they acted like museums for people to check out.  Lots of pride amongst those who maintained a "cabinet of curiosity"

On of the most famous cabinets was maintained by "Old Worm"

BooYah

That last post took me forever to figure out how to do 

Just thought I'd let everyone know  It came from WIKIPEDIA

"Muse." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 22 Jan 2009, 01:05 UTC. 23 Jan 2009 <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Muse&oldid=265607698>.

The Muses

Greek name	Translation	Image	Goddess of...
Calliope	the 'beautiful of speech'		chief of the Muses and Muse of epic or heroic poetry
Clio	the 'glorious one'		Muse of history
Erato	the 'amorous one'		Muse of love or erotic poetry, lyrics, and marriage songs
Euterpe	the 'well-pleasing'		Muse of music and lyric poetry
Melpomene	the 'chanting one'		Muse of tragedy
Polyhymnia or Polymnia	the '[singer] of many hymns'		Muse of sacred song, oratory, lyric, singing and rhetoric
Terpsichore	the '[one who] delights in dance'		Muse of choral song and dance
Thalia	the 'blossoming one'		Muse of comedy and bucolic poetry
Urania	the 'celestial one'		Muse of astronomy

WHY????!!?!?!??!?! and a bunch of other things

Walter Ong in his book Orality and Literacy asks a very interesting question on page six.  He writes "it will be well to set the stage here by asking why the scholarly world had to reawaken to the oral character of language"  especially since as he later notes "writing can never dispense with orality." (6, 8 respectively).  I understand his argument of the importance of orality especially since of the 1000s of languages spoken on the planet only 78 have written literature's.  However I must admit that at this point of my studies, and I consider this the starting point, I cannot even venture a guess as to WHY orality became pushed under the rug.  Ironically, as I write this blog every time I type the word ORALITY a squiggly little red line appears to inform me that the internal Safari dictionary is devoid of a entry for the word.  It seems that academia phased out the concept of orality so much so that it fails to find a place in the all knowing spell check database.  My only guess as to the nefarious reasons to the state of this situation can be likened to the feeling that permeates our society of new technology.  No one wants the old gremlin with the 8-track, they much prefer the shiny new Hummer with the DVD player or more explicitly, who needs orality when there is literacy?

Like all things considered old and out dated, or better yet "vintage,"   A trendy group of individuals are bound to rediscover this "vintage" orality and thus reinvent cool with spoken language as opposed to its written and print counterpart.  Obviously Ong sees potential in oral culture and though some may disagree I think some aspects of the Hip-Hop culture would agree.  Hip-Hop artists commonly freestyle their music much like the original Jazz musicians.  The lyrics spoken by these artists never find their way onto a written CD cover and generally change from show to show much like the Jazz musicians 70 years ago, some of which who were musically illiterate.   I bring this up not because I maintain a specially affinity to Hip-hop but simply because their culture came to mind to prove my point in thinking of orality. 

The unfortunate nature of the Literate culture is the tendency to forget.  In my World Literature class we are reading Viking Sagas about the discovery of Vinland (North America)  These sagas were originally of the Oral tradition but then with the advent of writing became part of Old Norse literature.  Here's where the story gets interesting.  When the sagas were written down, the bards, elders, and storytellers forgot them because they were now written down and they didn't need to remember them.  Well over the course of almost 1000 years of history, thanks to cultural blending with the development of better technology and poor printing, the sagas were lost in the fabric of time both in oral and written form.  The major viking nations of Scandinavia and Iceland lost their written history of one of the most important discoveries of the Common Era.  The story doesn't end there however.  A small group of Islands in the North Atlantic called the Faroe Islands the Viking culture lived on.  These extremely remote islands retained the sagas in their original oral form.  Due to the remoteness of the Islands and the remoteness of the local language no system of writing had been developed.  The Faroe Islands remained a "primary oral" culture until the late 18th century and thus preserved most of the original Viking sagas passed down from over 1000 years ago.  

Why is memory and orality important?  Well as seen above, because books have a habit of burning, rotting, or disappearing.  So much of the history of the world is lost thanks to lost texts.  I would venture to guess much of the questions scientists have about the history of the world was written down someplace but somehow slipped through the cracks in time.  Now if only those texts were remembered like they were for the first 40,000 years of human existence, we would have far fewer questions to answer.

Lets Git It On

Fo Sho