Another thing some actors do is memorize lines backwards.

Say you read thru “To Be or not to be….”

It can seem at a glance to be a soft balloon of thoughts of various sorts, and by the end you realize he was contemplating dying but decided death is bad. But it is really a step by step series of revelations in Hamlet’s mind that we glimpse as they occur. And the speech is richer and more meaningful if you experience those revelations as Hamlet does.

First he ponders where it is better to live or be dead. Then he muses that be dead is no different than sleeping. Then he points out to himself that when you sleep you have dreams. Then he speculates that the dead might also experience another world. He considers the possibility that those visions might be horrifying and that man in this world cannot know them. He observes the nature of the fear and trembling we all experience on the brink of this unknown. And then he speculates that death is horrible merely because man imagines (and could be correct) there are unknown horrors on the other side. He compares it to his own inaction and makes observations about how this fear might cause us all to fail to act.

After studying this a million times this step by step series of insights is clear, but it is much more organic when you hear it on stage or screen (and is meant to be).

An actor, by going thru it backwards, develops a hyperawareness of why the line he just learned is there because the next thing he learns is the line that created the conditions for it. You don’t see so clearly that one line leads to the next when you read it the normal way because you are used to gaining meaning in chunks and taking the whole context in before drawing conclusions. If you go backwards, it all makes no sense whatsoever so the mind grasps at the meaning of each line in order to make the experience cohesive. This is my very unschooled layman’s explanation, and I’m sure it could be better explained by experts.

It seems very much like the drawing technique wherein you turn an image upside down and draw it that way, an act that dramatically emphasizes one line leading to the next without the confusion created by whatever perception of the whole image you might have had when it was uprigt and normal. Freed from your idea about this image by approaching it from the backside like this you are relatively free to see all the connecting fibers (the tress more clearly than the forest) and build a much firmer foundation of understanding.

I think you could draw paralells to reverse engineering as well. You want to know how a machine works when you have the machine over here and all the parts over there is difficult because you can’t stop thinking about your existing perceptions of the machine. Take it apart from finished to pile of parts without regard for the “meaning” of the machine and you develop a rapid understanding of how and why it was assembled as it was. That is also a very unschooled explanation of reverse engineering, but for this discussion perhaps it is close enough to a poetric understanding of the idea.

I just started reading through a PDF copy of “How to Develop a Super-Power Memory” by Harry Lorayne. I’m not sure how I stumbled across it, but here’s a link:

http://numberstheorys.tripod.com/superpowermemory.pdf

• Jason

Another trick that helps enormously when memorizing lines is physicality. I used to love to take walks or a run while memorizing certain long passages, but even in my apartment, I’m always on my feet, walking around, getting the words (and, as you mentioned, the feelings behind them) in my bones.

I think a lot of civilians are disconnected from their bodies, and I’m guessing that goes triple for geeks (I am one-quarter geek on my mother’s side, and tend to live in my head). Movement is good for lots of things!

Four Things…

I guess you knew it was coming. I blame a few folks for this one. Four jobs I’ve had: Salesman at Software Etc. Research Clerk Door-to-door Newpaper Salesman Designer Four movies I can watch over and over: Blade Pirates of……

Perhaps you might be aware (or not) that a small portion of us suffer from a “mental blindness”, which ruins visual mnemonic devices. Specifically, I cannot recall or create pictures in mind, at all. I didn’t even know I was different until I was about 20, after asking a fellow keyboardist whether he memorized songs by the way they sound, or by the way his hands rested on the keyboard (the two ways I do it). He said “I can do that, but it’s much easier to just see the notes and play those”, and my jaw dropped. It had never occurred to me that people actually meant it when they said “see things” with their mind, and it started me on a continual quest to discover more about how differently everyone else related to the world.

And at age 44, I still cannot, in any way shape or form, see a thing. Everything I remember has to come to me in sounds or in body positions. As a result, I do break things down into meanings, and am unable to remember the specific words. I also remember people by simple words about what they are wearing, and if they later change clothes and come back into the room but don’t speak (I can recognize their voice that way), I think I’m talking to a new person!

Oh, and forget computer icons. I have to name each icon, then associate the function with the spoken name. If I later pick a different name for the icon, I no longer know what it does. Most of the time, I find myself hovering for the tooltip so I can get a consistent name for the icon. Ugh. Takes far too long. (Keep that in mind when you are designing user interfaces, please!)

Anyway, just a datapoint about what some of us have to deal with.

I second what communicatrix said — I’ve always learned lines while pacing in circles. I know I’ve got them cold when I can do it while circling in the other direction.

Dude, brains are weird.

Wow. Having read Randal L Schwartz’s note, I guess I’ll have to rethink what I do when I write software to help people get more visual help. I don’t have a good memory myself, but I always assume everyone else does. Memory as a tool does benefit from training it up. These things do work but they need to be used properly and it usually takes more time to commit things to memory. Once it becomes a habit, feats like this (www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8456677/), reciting pi to 83,000 places, can be done - even if it is pointless.

Yep, I learned this in high school when Mrs. W said we would each have to memorize a part of the Canterbury Tales- and not modernized, either. Then she revealed the secret to memorizing poetry: “You have to understand every single word,” she said.

It works. 30 years later I can still say some of the lines: When that April with his shoures soote The of drought of March hath pierced to the roote…

I checked…here it is: Whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote The droghte of March hath perced to the roote And bathed every veyne in swich licour, Of which vertu engendred is the flour; 5 Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth Inspired hath in every holt and heeth The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne Hath in the Ram his halfe cours yronne, And smale foweles maken melodye, 10 That slepen al the nyght with open eye- (So priketh hem Nature in hir corages); Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages…

It’s how I learned to recite “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” too (“On Dasher! On Dancer!..) which REALLY impresses the kids in my life…

I have a really good memory, but sometimes I have a hard time remembering information that was just given to me, such as when I’m given more than one job assignment at the beginning of my shift. Instead of writing them down as other operators do, I’ve found that mentally “mapping” the presses, where they are in the shop and their relation to the other presses I’m assigned to helps. I’ve also found that I can recall certain number sequences better (such as my part numbers or serial numbers which need to be written on cards which will accompany the parts to the next operation) if I imagine myself as a camera “taking a picture”. I actually look at the number and blink, fixing the image in my head, then I immediately replay the image by writing it onto the card, and it tends to stick with me the rest of my shift.