on memories

I've been halfway fascinated by the concept of the memory cathedral for years. It struck me as a rather clever mnemonic device, but not one I could use. My thought has always been that for something like this to work, you need to be able to encapsulate emotive responses in it, to help trigger the memories you're carefully storing in the fabric of your cathedral. Cathedrals just don't encapsulate a sufficient range of emotive responses for me. It's partly because I'm Jewish, of course, but also partly because I'm Australian: a cathedral, for me, would be a very half-hearted storage device because I know it intellectually, but only have a passing acquaintance with it in other ways. Besides, it's too fixed in time for me.

Today I taught my students the memory cathedral notion so that they could use it in their writing. I explained why it didn't work for me and told them I had solved the problem for them. I passed round a catalogue of household storage devices. They chose one for their starting point and they started storing memories and writing about them. A memory home, rather than a memory cathedral. One of my students already has a memory wardrobe full of the clothes he has worn to important events.

And that, folks, was my morning.

Conflux Programming Update

In a very short while I should be able to give you hints on how to avoid me at Conflux. To tide you over till then, a programming update has just been blogged on the Conflux website.