I've been thinking about memory today, about the things I've memorized (particularly literary works) over time. I still remember the Robert Louis Stevenson poem we learned for my preschool graduation ceremony. In high school, I committed a couple of Shakespeare's sonnets to memory, thinking they might be a good thing to have on hand. And I do pull them out from time to time, although the opportunity rarely presents itself. I have a Rumi poem rattling around in there, too, although it's a translation, so who knows how close it is to the original.
And I remember things that I used to have memorized, like the songs to various musicals I was in during high school, but I've lost most of them over time. Due to disuse, I guess, the way I've forgotten most of the knots I've learned.
The thing that started all this thinking in the first place was remembering a particular scene from the book Catch-22 that I used to know, at least partially, by heart. In this scene, and I hope I have this right, Yossarian is on trial, and things keep going around and around and around.
Judge: "When didn't you do _[whatever, I can't recall what it was]_?"
Yossarian: "I never did, sir."
J: "I don't want to know when you did do it, I'm asking when you didn't do it."
Y: "I always didn't do it, sir."
Something like that. Maybe I can dig up a copy and find it again. Anyway, a friend and I were reading the book around the same time (although, somehow, I never got around to finishing it), and we would read it aloud together, one of us taking the part of the judge and the other being the defendant. I'm pretty sure we had a lot of it memorized.
You know how they say that you can use singing as a memory aid when studying for tests? That is, you're supposed to put the words to a song, because lyrics are easier to remember than straight-up facts. Well, I think that it would do us all a huge favor if artists would just start adding scientific theories or mathematical principles or historical facts to their songs. Or, you know, even a difficult word, in context. Then when people were studying for the GRE (as I recently was), they could say, "Hmmm...'calumny'. Wasn't that the title of a big 2007 hit about false and malicious statements, designed to injure the reputation of someone or something?" (credit: dictionary.com)
