I've been reading Frankenstein on the train journey to work in the morning - awesome book, and puts me in the mood to write a big long essay about it at the weekend, but I can't help feeling that I should be doing memory stuff. The whole me-being-good-at-memory-competitions thing came about because I spent long train journeys to and from work learning my original Ben-system list of images, way back in 2003. I should be doing the same thing again. But, much like Victor Frankenstein found, creating the first monster when you're all enthusiastic about something that's never been done before is much easier than creating the second one, when you're all horrified by your own creation and fearful for the fate of the entire human race.
Well, I wouldn't go that far, but I'm not as motivated any more. Maybe I should get a new hobby instead.
3 comments:
Awesome Frankenstein analogy!
Frankenstein is a great analogy for memory work! You end up creating your own personal monster after awhile, and need to reconcile with it; like in "Young Frankenstein" comedy movie with Gene Wilder.
I just polished off Marilu Henner's auto biographical audio book "Total Memory Makeover". She is a former actress on the US comedy sitcom "Taxi", and is one of 12 confirmed people in the world with HSAM (Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory". She can remember the details of her life every day since her Communion at age 7. Most of her abilities admittedly come from practice, and systems she self-taught herself at that age. She has great advice on lots of memory techniques for autobiographical memory. Unfortunately, she sours on techiques such as Memory Palace, Pegs, and Journeys. Sad, because these techniques obviously work, from personal experience, and because she self-admittedly uses quite a few self-taught techniques herself: such as daily recall, historical and month timelines, journaling, personal mental journeying, and categorization methods. Overall, an absolutely excellant audio book at the library, and I would highly recommend it to you Ben, I think you would love it.
She sours on the very techniques she almost definitely users.
Another attention seeker I am afraid.
I would discard her nonsense and just move on.
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