The Art of Memory Chapter 1

-Simonides was the developer of the memory theatre and also conceived the concept of mnemonics.

-Rather than a specific quote, I find myself inspired by a mixture of concepts from this chapter. Our author tells us that a storyteller moves through his memory theatre in his mind while telling. Specific objects act as cues. The imagery, the cues of the mind act like the letters and words on paper. "The same set of loci can be used again and again for remembering different material." What I wonder, from all of this, is whether at any point the type of symbolism involved bleeds over to the story itself, similar to the way the rules and techniques of the written word bleed into orality.

I like the idea of using an imagined space as your memory theatre. In an art class I took last semester our final assignment was to make a visual labyrinth. Somewhat abstract, there needed to be a sense of movement, a hint as to how you make your way through the maze. Perhaps an image like this could be used as a basis for the memory theatre. While in the class we had a lecture on the story of the Labyrinth and its basis in the real world. The actual city of Knossos on Crete (the island of the mythical labyrinth) was built like a maze, with no direct path to its central courtyard. Similarly, caves found on the island are thought to have had religious ceremonies taking place deep within. We have real world structures combining with symbolic ideas. Physical journeys through confusing passages lead to rewards, wisdom, and knowledge deep within. Mental and psychological journeys reap the same benefits. In the actual myth we find the man-eating Minotaur instead, but the idea of a physical journey standing in for a figurative one blends perfectly with the idea of memory theatre.

For those of you unfamiliar with Joseph Campbell, he writes of the hero's journey, an archetypal path that most myths and many other stories fit into. He focuses on certain events (refusing the call to adventure) and characters (woman as goddess or temptress) and how they fit into the journey as well as what these elements might represent. He draws his ideas from a wide range of stories as well as from other sources of symbolism, like Freud. Regardless to the consistency of such a system, I am curious as to its effect on a storyteller's memory theatre and vice-versa. Before Simonides officially founded the technique, could storytellers of old, needing to recall so very much, have subconsciously linked stories in a similar manner? Could this method of memory actually have made ancient stories more similar to one another? Could imagery used to affix the memory of the story have become part of the tale itself? It is true that using unique, astoundingly beautiful, or hideously grotesque images improves memory, and all of those things find there way into the most epic of stories.

In a more recent context, over ninety percent of movies are written in the three act structure (setup, confrontation, resolution) that includes a few more specific plot points that should exist. This is an outline that works. Most movies use it, when used poorly we call it cliche. A prominent problem is sticking too closely to rules and guidelines such as these, using them as a crutch. On the other hand, most successful stories (intentionally or not) follow it perfectly. Perhaps there is a need to have some sort of understanding (things are happy now, everything needs to get a lot worse and then even better than before by the end of the film). It creates relatability to the movie from the first viewing. This validates that the journey is much more important than the destination but that there needs to be even the slightest hint of order to help us through.