Final Product

                                                                      ©Patient Parker 
 
I absolutely enjoyed listening to and watching all the musyrooms act out in the reality of the physical world. I was so impressed by how intricately each system appeared, yet how simple the formulas were in that individuals mind. Every presentation deserved so much more time than the 10 minute slot allotted, but isn't that what invokes the mystery? We each entertained the class with a sneak peak into the locked-safe that has become of our minds. Instead of repeating someones name over and over with the hopes of being able to recall it hours later, I simply create a bazaar image and place it it one of the many nooks and crannies of my musyroom. As per requested by our fearless leader, here is the extended (yet not entire) trailer for my mussyroom:

The top floor as I mentioned included our TV room (dinosaurs representing the lack of technology), Brothers room (Car:symbolizing a interest), bathroom (beach themed) and my room (complete with paint samples and old sport memorabilia). My room also has distinct belongings that readily aid my memory system: a large mirror my father brought home from work that got bedazzled and leaned up against the wall adjacent from my bed, a desk that is warped at the bottom from a basement flood in a previous home, a sweet-pea poster from the Bozeman festival the year I was born, and a built in set of drawers next to my closet door. My closet itself is fairly large and always smells faintly of stinky shoes. My mother keeps most of her footwear in my closet (seeing as my parents room doesn't have storage space) and I can still smell the stench the space encapsulates. The socks hanging next to the TV room represent my little cousin who always stays in that room when she visits, as well as a "comfy" clothing item symbolizing the harmony of the room. 

The main floor includes the kitchen, dinning room (table complete with Thanksgiving dinner), living room (buses: represent vehicles of my past present and future and the people that have entered into my life and made an impact), parents room (glue represents the adhesion of our family unit, the necklaces representing my mothers jewelry collection that I often admired growing up), and the green room/computer room. The bathroom between my parents room and the green room have scissors associated with it because we entirely re-modeled the bathroom leaving nothing in the same place or condition. What used to be a carpeted brown disaster is now a bright, tiled walk in shower :)

In the basement there is a bathroom that I myself re-modeled and decorated, our pantry, a spare bedroom, walk in closet, game room and laundry room. The recorder in the spare bedroom represents my flute and all the nights I spent memorizing sheet music. The stapler and arts and crafts symbolizes my mothers art area where she works on projects and paintings. The fishing hook hanging from the closet where all our outdoor gear is stored represents a fishing vest my grandfather bought for me.

As demonstrated in class, when I am given information to memorize I simply link the object, event or person with a memory and a space in my mussy room and it stays with me---forever.

The End.


I just want to use this last blog entry to thank you for a fantastic semester. The material I will take from this class is practical and you caused my brain mental pushups everyday. I have enjoyed the class, my classmates and you, our fearless leader. Have a good summer.

Over and Out,
Tia of the Crawling Ants

Script for Tradition Presentation

Now when the roasts were cut, the
winebowls full,
A herad led the minstrel down the room
Amid the deference of the corwd, and
paused
to seat him neear a pillar in the center
]whereupon that resourceful man,
Odysseus,
Carved out a quarter from his chine of
pork,
Crisp with fat, and called the blind mans
guide:
Herald! Here, take this to Demodokos:
Let him feast and be merry, with my
compliments.
All men owe honor to the poets—honor
And awe, for they are dearest to the Muse
Who puts upon their lips the ways of life
Gentle Demodokos took the proffered gift
And inwardly rejoiced. When all were
served,
Every man’s hand went out upon the
banquet,
Repelling hunger and thirst, until at length
Odyssus spoke again to the blind minstrel:
Demodokos, accept my utmost praise.
The Muse, daughter of Zues in radiance,
Or else Appollo gave you skill to shape
With such great style your songs of the
Akhaians—
Their hard lot, how they fought and
suffered war.
You shared it, one would say, or heard it
all.
Now shift your theme, and sing that
wooden horse
Epeios built, insppird by Athena—
The ambuscade Odysseus filled with
frighters
And sent to take the inner town of Troy.
Sing only this for me, sing me this well,
And I shall say at once before the world
The grace of heaven has given us a song.
The minstrel stirred, murmuring to the
god, and soon
Clear words and notes came one by one, a
vision
Of the Akhains in their graceful ships
Drawing away from shore: the torches
flung
And shelters flaring: Argive soldiers
crouched
In the close dark around Odysseus: and
The horse, tall on the assembly ground of
Troy.
For when the Trojans pulled it in,
themselves,
Up to the citadel, they sat nearby
With long-drawn-out and hapless
argument—
Favoring, in the end, one course of three:
Either to stave the vault with brazen axs,
Or haul it to a cliff and pitch it down,
Or haul it to a cliff and pitch it down,
Or else to save it for the gods, a votive
glory—
The plan that could not but prevail.
For Troy must perish, as ordained, that day
She harbored the great horse of timber;
hidden
The flowr of Akhaia lay, and bore
Slaugter and death upon the men of Troy.
He sang, then, of the town sacked by
Akhaians
Pouring down from the horse’s hollow
cave,
Thi sway and that raping the steep city,
And how Odysseus came like Ares to
The door of Deiphobos, with MENELAOS,
AND BRAVED THE DESPERATE FIGHT
THERE—
CONQUERING ONCE MORE BY Athena’s
power.
The splendid minstrel sang it.
On the lost field where he has gone down
fighting
The day of wrath that came upon his
children.
At sight of the man panting and dying
there,
She slips down to enfold him, crying out;
Then feels the spears, prodding her back
and shoulders
And goes bound into slaverty and grief.
And odysseus
Let the bright molten tears run down his
cheeks,
Weeping the way a wife mourns for her
lord

Musey Room

It was not until returning home after moving away for college that I realized the memories you leave behind remain stagnant in time, waiting to be revisited. This past weekend I was home for Easter and I couldn't help reminiscing on all the good (and bad) times I had had growing up. As I lay in bed that night, staring through the dark at my old room, I was overwhelmed with all of the familiar feelings, smells and sounds that rushed over me. On the wall across from my bed still remained the quote I painted on my wall during my sophomore year (I won't recite it here); on the ceiling and left adjacent wall the painted circles (all sizes and colors) remained untouched; against my bed, on the dark purple wall, hung my High School sport posters, metals and honors, as if I never left. I must have lay in my bed for hours recounting the personality of my room, trying to stow away the smallest of details to later extract from memory. I thought of all the mornings I had flown out of bed at the last second, wolfed down breakfast and rushed to school. I thought of all the sleepovers and laughter my room had witnessed. It was at some point in the early morning I realized how much I missed those times, those memories. I wouldn't want to go back and relive the memories, but just to travel back in time and watch those moments that change your life play out before your eyes, wouldn’t that be something. But of course, isn't that what memory palaces are for; a vehicle to take you back in time as if you were a bug on the wall, a witness to your future?

Ahhh I digress… here is the point:  

My mother and I pulled out an old scrap book and spent an entire night blubbering over the cute baby pictures, the crazy hair styles and the eccentric outfits. One picture in particular brought back the strangest rush of emotions; I was wearing a shirt that had a clip art polar bear above the word "CHILL." Immediately I could see a specific setting and I could feel .... I can't put my finger on it. The setting was not one I could describe but even as I write this I can see it clear as day. Strange.

 OF COURSE. It hit me. I knew what I wanted to present as my musey room....

I have decided to build a model of a house, or a combination of houses that will contain photographs of memories that evoke strong emotional responses. A musey room presentation presents a difficult challenge in the sense that no one can quite put a finger on their own imagination, their own memory palace. Presenting a musey room to the class is like trying to contain the vastness of the universe. Describing your life in five words or less would perhaps prove to be less challenging than building a physical representation of what our minds invent. But, through the power of images, photographs and memories, I will attempt to present a physical musy room based on my experiences. Let the creativity begin.

Quiz Review.

Quiz Questions.

1. How should we read and write?
Truthfully 

2.Writing transcends from the personal to the _______?
Trans-personal

3.Kane defines myth as:
The music made when the earth itself sings.  


4. With the Theatre, the art of memory has returned to its classical position as a part of __________?
Rhetoric (used by Cicero)


5. What are the differences in style between the interview in Camillo's Theatre and Bruno's dialogue?
Camillo is the polished Venetian orator presenting a memory system that is ordered and neoclassical in form. Bruno is an ex-friar, infinitely wild, passionate and unrestrained. 

6. What was Bruno's philosophy?
The Hermetic Philosophy: man is the great miracle, men is divine.

Unforgettable Memories

For some reason, my most memorable memories are those in which I am getting in trouble. Perhaps the moments I remember most vividly are those in which I was having the most fun J  Seeing as I now live in the very neighborhood I grew up in a mere 15-18 years ago (family graduate housing), I find myself having waves of deja vu quite frequently. I remember these moments with such detail that I can recall the tone changes in my mother’s exhausted voice as she reprehended me on this particular occasion. She had found me trying to start my own ant farm under the sheets of the bottom level of my bunk bed. I was in the living room, unaware of my mother’s whereabouts when I heard her shriek—followed by a loud and irritated “TIIIIIIIIAAA!” She rounded the corner and marched up the hallway entering into the living room. “Follow me young lady,” she managed to spit out as she whirled around, dragging me with her.

We entered my room, which at the time seemed a large enough playground (now I use this room as my office and it does not have nearly the footage I seem to remember). There was a big-bird toy on the ground that, when turned around, could house a book on tape if you removed the flap covering his rear end. Next to my bed stood a white painted desk my father had built for me and next to that my toy chest that had my birthday and name engraved into the wood (a birthday present from my grandfather).

My mother pulled down the sheets to my ruffled bed to expose my newest project: project ant farm. Intermixed with the dried dirt, worm and dandelion there were several ants scattering across my yellow sunflower printed sheets.

The funny thing about this memory is not what I remember, but rather what I don’t. For the life of me I cannot think of how my mother punished me or who had to clean up the mess, but I do remember the details leading up to the farm unveiling. Funny how our brain can selectively recall photos, videos, and short clips from the long documentary stored up there. How does it choose?

Travelers

Chinua Achebe’s profound revulsion to Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness gave birth to his short critique titled An Image of Africa; in which Achebe examines the hidden breakdown acclaimed author(s), including Conrad, mistake as prestige works of literature despite the underlying tones of apparent racism. In his short critique Achebe is quoted saying: 

Indeed, travelers can be blind. 

This got me wondering, are we (as travelers of our own memories) blind to the capacity and complexity of our experiences? When we fail to think memorable thoughts are we subjecting our memories to blind coherence? As abstract memory champions of our own musyrooms we must strive to take off the blindfold that passively dismiss knowledge and reclaim our eyeglasses. Maintaining our vision, our memorable thoughts, will acknowledge the first action of reclamation--In every sense returning to an original state of nature: the complete retention of memory.    

Bruno's Mnemonic Wheel

In the first fixed ring the practitioner will assign a mythological or heroic figure to each letter. Bruno provides some examples : A Lycaon; B Deucalion; C Apollo; D Argos ... The letters of the second ring correspond to an action or a scene associated with each figure. The examples provided are: AA Lycaon at a banquet; BB Deucalion and pebbles; CC Apollo and Python; DD Argos and some cattle.Thus rotating the first inner ring operates permutations between the figures and their action. Further permutation occurs when the third wheel is set in motion. It contains attributes or enseignes which can be easily passed from one figure to another. Bruno provides only four examples and leaves the rest to the imagination of his reader. These are : AAA, Lycaon at a banquet with a chain; BBB, Deucalion and pebbles with a headband; CCC, Apollo and Python with a baldric; DDD, Argos and some cattle with a hood. This way the systems makes it possible to create combinations of letters representing words, acronyms or syllables to be remembered by means of animated images mixing the attributes and accustomed actions of familiar mythological figures.

 

BAA: B Deucalion A at a banquet A with a chain
MAD: M Perseus A at a banquet D with a hood
CAD: C Apollo A at a banquet D with a hood
COD: C Apollo O and Proserpina D with a hood  

How did the system work? By magic of course, by being based on the central power station of the … images of the stars, closer to reality than the images of things of the sublunar world, transmitter of the astral forces, the `shadows’ intermediary between the ideal world above the stars and the objects and events in the lower world.’ (The Art of Memory, p. 223)

This kind of memory palace reminds me of the mystery stories I used to read as a young child, the stories in which you could choose to read alternative endings. Memory systems as complex as Bruno's gives the author or memory constructor power over mere chance. I can construct my own Musyroom but after I present the construction to the class does it loose a sense of liberty?