My Memory Mansion

While not technically a mansion, my childhood home was rather large. I chose to use it because of it's size and variety, though I have not lived there since 1999. In fact, as I pieced together my memory theatre I actually recalled a great deal of my home that I had forgotten, though much of it is probably incorrect. Many of the film titles are remembered through images from the films, or from other films. I also will include some of the details I have added in my hopes to remember the years each came out in, every decade has a symbol for the number which is reiterated at the five year mark.

1-Wings: A fluttering bird at my old bus stop near my home.

2-The Broadway Melody: A large music box on the berm to the right of the driveway entrance, under the crab-apple tree.

3-All Quiet on the Western Front: A dead and smoldering tree on the left (West) berm over a field of clover (1930, 3-leaf clover).

4-Cimarron: strange word, makes me think of cinnabar, the driveway is now red-orange.

5-Grand Hotel: A beautiful vintage car parked at the front door, bellhop opening its doors.

6-Cavalcade: I used the second definition, and have a procession of masked ball patrons piling out of the car.

7-It Happened One Night: Along with the party, there is a Chinese lantern (for night) and a masked couple stealing a kiss underneath.

8-Mutiny on the Bounty: a sea battle, including a giant squid, is engraven upon the door, a few loose clovers have been dropped at its base (1935).

9-The Great Ziegfeld: A white tiger (Siegfried and Roy) stretches on the carpet.

10-The Life of Emile Zola: A stretch, a child dressed as Zorro stands over the tiger.

11-You Can't Take It with You: Feathers (angels, afterlife) are strewn over the stairs, having been blown there by...

12-Gone With the Wind:...a large fan halfway up the stairs.

13-Rebecca: Just a woman in a flowy checkered dress (1940, squares are 4-sided), behind the fan.

14-How Green Was My Valley: The rest of the steps are overgrown with grass.

15-Mrs. Miniver: Minnie Mouse at the top of the stairs.

16-Casablanca: Sam at his piano just inside my parents' room.

17-Going My Way: Literally a large sign pointing towards the bathroom. (Though I made it old and rickety to help the image along)

18-The Lost Weekend: A man in a bubblebath, doing office-work. He holds a large metal square in his hand (1945) which is cutting him and drawing blood (always add blood if you're having trouble with an image).

19-The Best Years of Our Lives: Snow and autumn leaves fall in the shower, flowers line the floor, to show seasons changing.

20-Gentleman's Agreement: Two men in suits shake hands in the secrecy of the closet, I technically just passed through a wall, but that's alright.

21-Hamlet- A man and woman in royal dress sit in bed, Hamlet's mother and uncle.

22-All the King's Men: Humpty Dumpty lies cracked over a chair.

23-All About Eve: My niece, Eva, stands at the balcony in a star-covered dress (1950, stars have 5 points).

24-An American in Paris: A styrofoam airplane flies from the balcony to the pastures down the hill from my house, an activity from childhood, only this plane has an American flag on it.

25-The Greatest Show on Earth: Fireworks over the pasture.

26-From Here to Eternity: Crossing a stream, the reflection of stars in the the water.

27-On the Waterfront: Marlon Brando sits by the stream.

28-Marty: My friend Martin talks with Martin Scorsese at the fence, they are holding a metal star (1955).

29-Around the World in Eighty Days: The tip (yes, we had a tipi) has images of the Eiffel Tower and the Pyramids painted on it.

30-The Bridge on the River Kwai: I have added a small bridge inexplicably leading away from the tipi.

31-Gigi: Half-Life's G-Man stands with his briefcase. G-Man...G...G-G...Gigi. Yeah, I couldn't think of anything.

32-Ben-Hur: A chariot is on its way up the hill toward my house.

33-The Apartment: A small apartment looks over the path is carbon, up the hill, diamonds rest on the table on its patio. The sixth element on the periodic table is carbon, diamonds are made of carbon, (1960).

34-West Side Story: Two "chickens" fight at the top of the hill, movie reference if you don't understand.

35-Lawrence of Arabia: Lawrence, fully robed in white, stands on a large rock overlooking the edge of the hill.

36-Tom Jones: My lighting professor, Tom Watson, at the willow tree.

37-My Fair Lady: A lovely, period dressed woman sitting and winding a...

38-The Sound of Music: Music box, with a large diamond (1965) decorating it.

39-A Man for All Seasons: A mountain man wearing a large pack and lots of equipment, walking towards the pool.

40-In the Heat of the Night: People in the pool to escape the heat.

41-Oliver!: The cartoon Oliver (different movie, I know) in the shallow end.

42-Midnight Cowboy: The corpse of a cowboy leaning on the wall.

43-Patton: Patton...patent...Thomas Edison...the hot tub full of light bulbs instead of water. These lights are multicolored...rainbow...ROY G BIV...seven colors of the spectrum (1970).

44-The French Connection: A cliche Frenchman (stripy shirt, etc.) tying a knot on the pool fence.

45-The Godfather: Marlon Brando, again, in this film's character, opening a door to the house.

46-The Sting: A bathroom full of bees.

47-The Godfather Part II: Marlon Brando yet again!

48-One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest: The laundry room full of nests, including one with a large, multicolored egg (1975).

49-Rocky: Rocky, leaning on a rock outside.

50-Annie Hall: The main couple lounging on the trampoline. When I had trouble with it, I imagined the trampoline descending into the ground as a vertical HALLway.

have 8 tentacles).

54-Chariots of Fire: Inside the extra garage, chariots on fire.

55-Gandhi: The man himself sits cross-legged in the driveway.

56-Terms of Endearment: Another deer in the main garage.

57-Amadeus: A piano crashes down the stairs, just through the garage house-door.

58-Out of Africa: At the top of the stairs, a giraffe, a person in safari gear, and a giant spider (1985, spiders have 8 legs).

59-Platoon: In my brother's bedroom, everything is covered in camouflage mesh.

60-The Last Emperor: on his side of the loft that separates our rooms, a child dressed in royal clothing.

61-Rain Man: on my side of the loft, a downpour of rain indoors.

62-Driving Miss Daisy: A car crashing through the wall into my room (which is on the second story).

63-Dances with Wolves: Wolves and one cat (1990, cats have 9 lives) rush out of my closet and into...

64-The Silence of the Lambs:...the bathroom, where they kill a sheep.

65-Unforgiven: An old man is shackled to the wall of my sister's room.

66-Schindler's List: many pieces of paper covered in lists fill my other sister's room.

67-Forrest Gump: Forrest sits nearby on a stool.

68-Braveheart: William Wallace takes a zipline back to the first floor, a cat in his arms (1995).

69-The English Patient: A person in a hospital bed.

70-Titanic: A replica of the last tip of the ship sinks into the ground in the dining room.

71-Shakespeare in Love: Shakespeare sits on a cupboard.

72-American Beauty: a young woman wrapped in the American flag.

73-Gladiator: Gladiators fight in the kitchen near a broken computer (2000, for the Y2K crisis).

74-A Beautiful Mind: Russel Crowe again, different character.

75-Chicago: Richard Gere in character in the living room.

76-The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King: Lots of gold rings strewn on the couch.

77-Million Dollar Baby: a baby in a crib on a pile of money.

78-Crash: a gaping broken window, and another computer (2005).

79-The Departed: someone disappearing through said window.

80-No Country for Old Men: Multiple old men relaxing in the guest room.

81-Slumdog Millionaire: A blind and begging child in the hallway.

Blast! I Missed Class...Again!

I finally found something to base my epithet on (seeing as we've had trouble naming me) and it's visual, story-based, and slightly grotesque!

When I was around eleven years old I was at a scout camp where the meeting areas and cafeteria were at the bottom of the hill and the campsites were higher up. After an activity I was walking back to camp by myself and ducked under a log fence. Well, I came up to soon, and it hurt briefly but the pain went away. However, I started gushing blood from my head. So I return to the bottom of the camp, drenched in blood, casually asking if anyone had seen my father so that we could go to the hospital. I ended up getting stitches, resulting in a thin line of a scar on my scalp.

A couple summers ago I was working at a Blockbuster Video. I guess I hadn't had enough to drink that day because that night, just a few minutes before close, I was carrying a huge stack of dvds across the room, I felt woozy, and I woke up on the floor. I can't tell you whether I blacked out, causing the fall, or simply felt woozy, fell, and lost my memory of it because of hitting my head on a shelf. I found myself on the ground in a pile of dvd cases, once more bleeding from the head. Yet again I go to the hospital, yet again I get stitches. The kicker, however, is that the new wound actually hit the years-old one. I now have a checkmark on my head, though it's sort of curved and wonky looking. You can't really tell unless my hair is super short, but it's there.

So basically, now that you all have heard the story of the unlucky part of my head, this can be the memory associated with my epithet. For the more violent minded: "Blood-soaked Parker" or "Parker of the Bleeding Scalp" could work, but for simplicity's sake, and for consonance I think, "Checkmark Parker" should suffice. What do you think? Will "Checkmark Parker" give you an image of me in a mess of dvds soaked in blood, or do I need to put "bleeding" in my name somewhere?

My memory demonstration is of the Best Picture winners of the Academy Awards. There are actually 82 of them, so I memorized them all, I'll just recite the first fifty or the last fifty or something in class if we're short on time. Though I won't include them when reciting, I have also implemented visuals to remember the years by. So here they are in chronological order:

1-Wings
2-The Broadway Melody
3-All Quiet on the Western Front
4-Cimarron
5-Grand Hotel
6-Cavalcade
7-It Happened One Night
8-Mutiny on the Bounty
9-The Great Zeigfeld
10-The Life of Emile Zola
11-You Can't Take It with You
12-Gone With the Wind
13-Rebecca
14-How Green Was My Valley
15-Mrs. Miniver
16-Casablanca
17-Going My Way
18-The Lost Weekend
19-The Best Years of Our Lives
20-Gentleman's Agreement
21-Hamlet
22-All the King's Men
23-All About Eve
24-An American in Paris
25-The Greatest Show on Earth
26-From Here to Eternity
27-On the Waterfront
28-Marty
29-Around the World in Eighty Days
30-The Bridge on the River Kwai
31-Gigi
32-Ben-Hur
33-The Apartment
34-West Side Story
35-Lawrence of Arabia
36-Tom Jones
37-My Fair Lady
38-The Sound of Music
39-A Man for All Seasons
40-In the Heat of the Night
41-Oliver!
42-Midnight Cowboy
43-Patton
44-The French Connection
45-The Godfather
46-The Sting
47-The Godfather Part II
48-One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
49-Rocky
50-Annie Hall
51-The Deer Hunter
52-Kramer vs. Kramer
53-Ordinary People
54-Chariots of Fire
55-Gandhi
56-Terms of Endearment
57-Amadeus
58-Out of Africa
59-Platoon
60-The Last Emperor
61-Rain Man
62-Driving Miss Daisy
63-Dances with Wolves
64-The Silence of the Lambs
65-Unforgiven
66-Schindler's List
67-Forrest Gump
68-Braveheart
69-The English Patient
70-Titanic
71-Shakespeare in Love
72-American Beauty
73-Gladiator
74-A Beautiful Mind
75-Chicago
76-The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
77-Million Dollar Baby
78-Crash
79-The Departed
80-No Country for Old Men
81-Slumdog Millionaire

I'm still not entirely certain about the presentation assignment. Is it to be something specifically discussed in the books or simply a topic that fits with our class focus? I have a few topics that interest me, but honestly, nothing that has me bursting with excitement.

Print, It's Kind of a Big Deal

Just a few comments from Friday's class.

-The power of the written word was emphasized through the story of Baby M in which a surrogate mother decided to keep the baby. The courts eventually ruled in favor of the couple for whom she had carried and given birth for because of the written arrangement they had all agreed to and signed before hand. While I tend to agree with this case (she knew what she was agreeing to do) there are certainly cases when circumstances change that are beyond the scope of the original contract and even more frequently, contracts that are simply unfair. If I trick you into signing a contract allowing me to kill you, that shouldn't count as suicide. Caution and common sense should always be used in such cases, despite the concrete nature of writing.

-We discussed Finnegans Wake (Fin Again/Fun Again/Awake/A Wake) which seemed very entertaining, though nearly incomprehensible. This book was cited as an attempt to return to the style of orality. A concept I've been trying to work with in terms of filmmaking. Obviously films are capable of sound (unlike books) but given their similarly concrete nature they still lack something. I wonder if Finnegans Wake would be a good audio book?

The novel is circular. The "end" of the texts drops off in such a way as to be continued by the very beginning, thus it is endless. This concept reminded me of One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Don't continue reading this paragraph if you dislike (minor) spoilers, but the book covers the history of a fictional town, focusing on a specific family line. At the very end , both the town and the last of the family line are about to die. In the apocalyptic chaos of these final moments, the last family member finally interprets and reads a prophecy that had been written down long ago. It contains the entire history of the family, leading up to the moment that the man is reading it. It is essentially the same novel within itself. This moment invites another read and gave me an entirely different comprehension of everything I had just read.

I dare anyone to read Mark Leach's Marienbad My Love, found here. Which was basically only written to be ridiculously long in every way imaginable. It is seventeen million words long, the title alone (Marienbad My Love is the "condensed" version) is nearly seven thousand words. That being said, I've read some excerpts and there is a sense of fun in reading it, similar to Finnegans Wake. I expect there had to be, or else the aythor would have lost his mind, assuming he hadn't already.

I Should Really Post More Often

I have, once more, neglected to write anything for quite some time. I even found a paper from at least a week ago with various comments I gathered from my reading of the texts. At this point I doubt I'll understand them much but I want to take care of them as best as I can so as to be capable of moving on.

Yates
-Camillo's memory theatre drew from many ideologies as he attempted to contain the entire universe in his memory. He illustrated this goal with imagery of finding oneself within a forest and being unable to form a clear picture of the forest or one's place in it without climbing to the top of a high hill that overlooks it all. Yates quotes Camillo as saying, "in order to understand the things of the lower world it is necessary to ascend to superior things, from whence, looking down from on high, we may have a more certain knowledge of the inferior things."

-A memory system of this scale, particularly the seven parallel gates, is a systematized version of the traditional memory theatre we've seen before. Although Camillo deals with symbols and concepts I do not easily relate to, I would consider creating something like this for myelf for the purpose of exponentially expanding my capacity to remember. My current theatre works very linearly and simply. This is good for contained stories and lists. I would like to accomplish a more wikipedia-like memory system without simply complexifying each locus. How, precisely, i don't know yet.

-One last thought with this. Yates sums up Camillo's feat not simply as "a highly ornamental filing cabinet" but as an idea "the Idea of a memory organically geared to the universe." This brought to mind an image that has always fascinated me known as the "Flammarion woodcut" which I will not explain but have posted above.

Ong
-Print is imbued with a sense of closure, which is part of the reason I have trouble getting myself to write things down, yet can talk forever. I have "communication commitment issues" in that respect.

-The relationship of sounds and words and letters brings to mind waveform. Waveform is the most literal visual interpretation of sound (though it would be next to impossible to read and write with it). Most people are familiar with how it looks, the squiggly lines you see on music visualizers, and in some of our classes for film we had to edit these patterns. You have a general pattern (flat means silence, spike means a loud noise) but the more you zoom into it the more detailed it becomes. Words are rarely tidy little pieces like they are when printed, everything mushes and slurs together in waveform and reminds me of the early texts where the idea of spacing hadn't come up yet.
"My Book and Heart Shall Never Part"
-I borrowed this short film from Professor Sexson (which he and his wife, Lynda, created). Using fictional and nonfictional elements the film examines 18th-19th century children's books, their origins, and how they shaped our culture. I found the subject very intriguing, but what best pertains to our class at the moment is the educational nature of most of these books. Of particular note are the books that teach the alphabet through simple images and sayings "The Eagle's flight is out of sight" for the letter E, for example. Books like these were a natural transition between the letter and image memorization aids we see in Yates chapter five and our often less compelling modern works "A is for Apple, B is for Ball." Going along these lines and the common class theme of using grotesque imagery I invite you to read through Edward Gorey's "The Gashlycrumb Tinies" found here.

Ken, Kenning, Kennings

On Monday we learned the epithet "Keen Kenning Ben." I had just posted a blog on the word kenning and at first thought this was the same reference. It soon became apparent that they were different words and that our mutual use of these terms was purely coincidental. Therefore, I would like to write about kenning more thoroughly.

As used in the epithet, kenning seems to be a verb (to ken) meaning to know or perceive. Ben thus understands things keenly, or sharply. If there is another definition or understanding of the word I do not know it.

My use of kenning is a noun (a keening, many kennings). I found the term by looking up the phrase "whale-road" as mentioned in Ong as he discusses using formulaic language, though I think it is mentioned explicitly somewhere.

A kenning is a figurative expression used to substitute a noun. We get them from old Norse poetry, particularly from Beowulf. They can be phrases or compound words. Whale-road means sea, storm of swords means battle, sea steed means ship, bane of wood means fire, and so on. Kennings can even be used within other kennings: A raven is a war-gull, a feeder of ravens is a warrior, thus a warrior is a feeder of war-gulls.

A kenning is a circomlocution, a longer, more complicated way of saying something relatively simple, somewhat like riddles. Using a kenning rather than the literal word, further attention is drawn to the word, further thought invested than normal. Kennings are like epithets. They create memorable elements that can easily be used again and again, thus aiding the oral storyteller. Finally, most kennings create a visual that outweighs that of the literal word.

Quote of My Day

"Where there is no narrative, there is no history."
-Bendetto Croce

In the Dark Backward and Abysm of Time

It has been far too long since my last post, yet this entire time I have been making notes as to what I'd like to talk about. With massive threads of interest I did what I always do, wrote them all down and tried to link them thematically, brainstorm style. This resulted in a very cluttered mess. So many of the topics blend with so many others that I really need a personal version of Wikipedia in order to sort through them all. Finally, though, I just need to start writing.

A little while ago in class we talked about being "spectators in our own skulls." This refers to the fact that no one sees truly from the perspective of anyone else. We tend to take for granted the fact that we have literally unique physical sensory experiences, the precise things "I" see, hear, etc. More so, we have individual thoughts, inner monologues, that nobody else can hear, though we must assume everyone else is as conscious of themselves as we are. Although the actual circumstances are vague, I remember a specific moment in childhood where I became aware that I could think inside my mind and thus became much more responsive to empathy. Everyone in the world lives an isolated life in this respect. We have no perfect way of knowing what another person is aware of, or even that they are aware. If all we have to go on is perception, how can we ever communicate love, hate, etc? Thus we must formulate from knowable imagery unknowable ideas.

Similar to this method of interpreting intangibles through physical means, the truth of stories is sometimes best received through less-than-true tales. A prime example of this is the film "Big Fish," which I strongly recommend watching. The point is, we all have knowledge, whether "true" facts or moral lessons, we wish to communicate to others so that they will remember them. As we continue to bring up in this course, as long as the essential truths stay firm, everything else can be entirely false. In fact, the more outlandish and bizarre the framing of the story, the more easily the story is recalled. Not only that, but describing something simple in a nontraditional way heightens our attention and invites reinterpretation. Similar to the epithet's we have discussed, kennings are strong recurring elements of story. Instead of fire say "bane of wood," instead of blood say "battle sweat," in this way even the most basic ideas are powerful.

A friend of mine asked why memories seem so much more emotionally charged than present experience. Like any story, the handful of things that keep a particular incident in mind in the first place are heightened as we draw in other references and remove unnecessary elements. That's not to say we simplify it infinitely. We don't remember being hit by a car and it hurt alot, we remember a person we had just spoken with, or a smell we noticed just before the incident. Insignificant details can become markers in the same way grotesque imagery does. Their inclusion in a story make the story legitimate, believable, even if other elements are impossibilities.

This leads me to cultural memory. Language is an organic, flowing link to the past. If you are reading this you understand written English, most likely you understand spoken English as well, which you learned from listening to others, who themselves listened to others, who listened to others still. You could potentially trace back a conversation (albeit a delayed one) from now to the dawn of language. You could also do the same thing between yourself and nearly anyone else on the planet. As far as history is concerned, this is my biggest interest. The connections that inevitably led to this moment, the way in which everything is connected whether we like it or not.

Connections and repetitions are fulfilling. In a film, there may be the huge twist at the end that makes the audience suddenly understand everything in a whole new light. There may also be something as simple as a subtle piece of music that is played and then much later under entirely different circumstances played again. Even if the audience is not paying attention to the score they will feel a link to the previous moment, and this will once more bring an element of interpretation that was not there before.

In class, the alethiometer from "His Dark Materials" was mentioned. Hopefully I do not spoil much (you've been warned) but it basically looks like a compass with a ring of small images instead of North, South, etc. The user can ask any question and can be told the answer through a spinning needle pointing at the objects. The objects are limited, but the answers are endless because any image has many levels of meaning. A cauldron could be literal, could mean cooking, could mean cooking up a plot, plans, etc. This is a perfect example of the storyteller's art. Yates mentions the memory treatises including long lists of objects (anvil, helmet, lantern) to be memorized and used in our memory palaces. Ong speaks of the recurrence of specific lines and epithets in Homeric poetry. Just like the images of the Alethiometer, there are limited elements but infinite applications. This is practical and simplifies a still impressive task when it comes to telling epics.

Recurring phrases and image inspire memory, we've covered this again and again. "The Divine Comedy" seems to exist less as a story of what the afterlife looks like, and more as a memory aid for virtues, vices, and the like. I wonder then, how we might apply these concepts to modern stories. I could definitely see a modern novel incorporating symbolic illustrations the way we see in medieval works. It would be similar to a text heavy picture book, only many of the images would not be literal. What I'm really interested in is the way this could be accomplished in movies.