![]() ![]() The word literally means “ reciter” – and that’s what the rawis were. Poetry didn’t originally emerge simply because it was beautiful, but because it was also an effective means of historical and cultural transmission: in poetic form, metered and rhymed, it was far easier to remember.įoer traces the tradition back to the Rawis in pre-Islamic Arabia, official memorizers who were tied to poets for the sole task of remembering their poetry. If you couldn’t remember, you couldn’t pass on-and you couldn’t even return to the information for your own personal use. The art of memorization rose to its peak before the heyday of the written word, at a time when it wasn’t only nice to remember, but essential to do so if one was to transmit any sort of cultural or historic-or any other, for that matter-information on to others. First, the original purpose of these mnemonic techniques, and second, the supposed tie between memory and enhanced creative ability. Two things had caught my eye as I read Foer’s book and prepared for my meeting with Ed Cooke. Just as it’s easier for me to remember the realms of existence because I acted each one of them out, so, too, will it be easier for me to think outside the box if I actually have a physical box and act the metaphor out, according to recent research.) (A complete side-note: I find it fascinating that embodiment has the same effects on creativity as it does on memory. See? A month, to the day, later.) What I was interested in was something far more specific: the application of memory, of these sorts of memory-enhancing techniques, to literature-and, on an even broader scale, to creativity. (Hell hungry ghosts animals humans demi-gods gods. So, the effectiveness of the approach as such wasn’t at issue. memory championship.) As for our vigorous role-playing, as Ed later told me, “memory is always reliant on the external environment to usher it along, whether that environment is another person’s conversation, a space, the rhythm of one’s body mid-dance move.” What better way to cue recall than by physical movement. (Ed Cooke, our fearless leader that evening, had been Foer’s coach in his successful quest to win the U.S. After all, I’d read Joshua Foer’s wonderful Moonwalking with Einstein and knew all about memory palaces and their effectiveness. Gods and demi-gods, as you will doubtless have guessed, are two of these realms. And at the moment, we were committing to memory the six realms of existence, according to Buddhism. We were putting into effect the most extreme method for storing memories: not just a memory palace-where you visualize elements as vividly as possible in a familiar space that you recreate in your mind, and then, to recall them, walk through that space and look at the pictures you’ve put there-but an actual physical embodiment of each idea we were to memorize. Our squirrel-like maneuverings couldn’t have been more purposeful. As part of the Rubin’s Brainwave series, memory grandmaster Ed Cooke was leading us in an immersive memory workshop. ![]() What we were doing, some weeks back, is far less bizarre than it may sound. We, too, want access to their ascent to the top-via the Rubin’s elevator shafts, which they now control. And there, on the other side of the wall that we are so effectively clawing, are the gods. But really, we’re just following orders (sure, that’s what they all say) and have gotten quite into our roles. You’d think we were, for some rather strange reason, imitating a group of rabid squirrels as they make their way en masse up some hefty tree trunk. I’m clawing away at the wall of the Rubin Museum of Art (fourth floor). ![]()
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