The Art of Living Backwards

In Carroll's "Through the Looking Glass" Alice is introduced to the White Queen who lives her life backwards and must run constantly to keep from losing her place. Alice thinks the idea of living backwards is unbearably strange, but the Queen assures her:

"'...but there's great advantage in it, that one's memory works both ways.' 'I'm sure mine only works one way,' Alice remarked. 'I can't remember things before they happen.' 'It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards,' the Queen remarked."

And the Queen is quite right. It is a poor sort of memory. And it is for precisely this reason that stories have been created. Stories, both oral and written, provide a way to remember things that are, have been, will one day be, are not, have never been, and will never be. And while we may not be able to pinpoint the future with quite the needle-focus certainty of the White Queen, we at least are provided with an overview of what may be.

Wordswallower

Here, for your general preusal, is Justin's epic poem:


O Sing in me Muse/ of He-Who-Just-Enrolled-
Read./ He who consumed/ words with such intensity/ it brought comment from/ the grizzled shaman./ Justin Wordswallower./ He who read to the/ depths of the ocean,/ the height of mountains,/ the width of broadest/ valleys 'til his word/ wandering brought him/ to his own land of/ the Great Outerborn.

Wordswallower trod/ the mists of his thought/ and built a new world./ He husbanded the/ plains and grew fresh words,/ green lines, paragraphs/ of fertility/ and chapters of great/ worth that sprang up sweet./ The new world bloomed /under the vigil/ of Wordswallower/ until the evil five/ brought a plague upon/ the dwellers of the/ Outerborn city/ of the Golden Leaves./ Here the alderwraths
attacked and battered/ brave Wordswallower./ The battle raged for/ many days and nights,/ neither advancing,/ neither retreating.

Then the cool winds of/ inspiration came,/ reviving the stricken/ Wordswallower and/ blew the alderwraths/ away. Cleansing the/ land of dull ideas/ and hackneyed writing,/ Wordswallower claimed/ his throne as king and/ creator and ruled in/ peace 'oer Outerborn/ forevermore. And/ this is where the sweet/ Muse abandonded me.

Googled Memory

I couldn't really think of anything to write for today's jornal so I decided to do a Google search on memory in general. Here are the top five links (Okay, somewhat edited. For instance- no duplications and no pages for buying memory for your computer, etc.):

American Memory from The Library of Congress

The Memory Exhibiton at The Exploratorium!

The Memory Hole: Rescuing Knowledge, Freeing Information

Learning and Memory: An Online Journal

Mind Tools: Essential Skills for an Excellent Career

So it's a pretty intersting mixed bag. Hope you enjoy preusing the sites as much as I have!

The Heart of Darkness

I have been reading Conrad's "The Heart of Darkness" (Loci: driveway) which is written as Marlow's yarn to his fellow travelers about his encounter with the mighty Kurtz. What I find particularly interesting is the storyteller's tricks he uses. For instance, as the narrator berates Marlow's story style when Marlow states, "'I don't want to bother you much with what happened to me personally,' he began, showing in this remark the weakness of many tellers of tales who seem so often unaware of what their audience would best like to hear..."(141).

While the narrator sees this as a defect of the storyteller's, I think it clearly shows the storyteller's art! He's got the audience intrigued as much about what he wont say as the tale he is about to spin. And a very good tale it is.

A Brief Interlude on Reality...

Mr. Rushdie discussed during both the master class and the lecture the fact that readers and journalists are unwilling to let fiction be fictional. They always call out for textual loci and physical places in the "real world". This made me think of a Patton Oswalt routine on reality tv. This is a complete digression from the class topic, but then again, I can just claim I'm an oral storyteller and digression and diversion are my birthright!

I couldn't find the transcript for this special which aired on HBO in 1999, so what I place here is a paraphrasement from memory. Wish me luck:

"There's no reality left anymore, we've filmed it all! Everything is getting big and dramatic. Pretty soon there gonna start adding ninjas to the reality shows and big explosions and stuff to keep the audience interested. After that people are gonna go to the movies to relax. Pretty soon we're gonna start swinging back the other way and there will be shows like "Man Eats Breakfast". And then all the snotty indie film kids will be like 'that's not reality, where are all the ninjas and explosions and stuff!'"

And all because people aren't willing to let fiction be fiction and just enjoy it... Sad times ahead...

The Rushdie Lecture

I was entranced by Rushdie's lecture last night but found his discussion of the difference between storytellers and novelists particualarly fascinating (as well as particularly applicable to this class).

Rushdie discussed how popular storytellers are in his native India, how they get huge audiences, and their amazing oral abilities keeping numerous narrative balls in the air. This can not be accomplished by a novelist. Novelists can not indulge in the songs, poems, and diversions of the storyteller because of the restricted structure of the novel form. And, as any storyteller knows, oral stories are never really over and can be infinitely expanded.

Novels are over- barring sequels, prequels, and fan fiction- at the end of the pagination. Even the longest novels feature a strictly ordered set of events that are fixed. When the last page is flipped the book is over. The End. Khattam Shud.

I agree with Rushdie that the novelist can not extend their works the way a storyteller can, but I admire the middle ground he has found with the reintroduction of new and refurbished mythologies and the liberal sprinkling of diversions that make his novels as close to oral stroytelling as written literature can get.

The Recitation

I was very impressed with everyone's ability to present the memorized materail. I myself, and I wouldn't mention this if I wasn't so impressed with the memory palace system, didn't actually start memorizing the list until an hour and a half before class. (On the note, many thanks to Beth Patterson for her help in my memory palace.) So I'm now a tried-and-true devotee of the memory palace system.

And I'm interested to learn about all y'alls memory palaces, and so here is my challenge to you: post, as a comment, what you chose as a loci for the following texts- Shakespeare, The Manuscript Found At Saragossa, and There Eyes Were Watching God.

It won't be a comprehensive view of your palaces, but I'm interested all the same. Thanks in advance to any and all who choose to answer!