Thanks for this Ellie, it feels very timely. I'm completely with you - memory is essential to imagination, and vice versa.
I write a fair bit for a non-academic / non-published person, but the best stories that have come to me - just a handful - are stored in my body. I'll gladly tell them, but I won't write them down for anyone!
I would welcome the opportunity to develop a capacity for memorising-embodying other people's words as well, so count me in!
Hooray! So glad you’re in, delighted that we’ll get to share another journey. Totally agree, about the best stories being held in the body. I hope we’ll hear more about that on Zoom soon! x
Looks great, Ellie. How memory relates to walking, place, landscape, and oral cultures, and the bridges between oral and literate ones, particularly the bardic mode, are of great interest to me.
Have you come across Lynne Kelly? An Australian researcher who relates the songlines (a fantastically deep and complex cultural mnemonic device which holds huge capacity to remember, for example geological events 30000 years ago...) to contemporary memory science. Her reflections on the ancient stone monuments of Britain, as places of memory/story/information/imagination (ie magic) make a lot of sense to me. https://www.lynnekelly.com.au/?page_id=1343
I would also include David Abram's Spell of the Sensuous (tho I think I'd include that in pretty much every conversation I care to get into!). And someone like Manchan Magan who is interested in this area too...
Oh I do want to do this. Where do I pledge? I need to find my text to remember, do you have any thoughts on the value of sticking to one longer or pick a number of shorter texts?
I think it’ll be easier to stick with one longer text, because you can put the whole thing in the same landscape of memory, instead of growing multiple landscapes. But I’m doing one short and one long piece, and several people are doing multiple, so it’s really up to you! x
I love this, especially the communal element. Practices like this are so obviously social in ways that silent reading and writing aren’t (though they are too). Would you have any requirements in terms of the length of passage that participants would memorize?
Hello! Thanks so much for reading. I’m not going to stipulate a minimum (or maximum) length for the memorized passage, since everyone is starting from a different place in terms of available time, cognitive makeup, etc. But I will share some guidelines about what’s thought to be a reasonable amount to memorize in that timeframe, and then people can adapt those guides as they see fit.
And totally agree about the communal element. It’s fascinating to me that reading too was originally a communal, out-loud activity, and that the shift to it being more internal and silent seems to have coincided with the shift to externalizing our memories. All sorts in there about being a body in a communal world vs being a brain floating alone…
Yes! There is a lot about this moment that gives me incredible anxiety, but if we are actually moving toward a post-literate, or more oral, mode of culture, I would at least welcome a turn towards more embodied and social / collective forms of thinking and processing! Difficult for me to think about, as someone so deeply identified with writing. And so many things I know I will never be able to let go of. But I’ve been challenging myself to think more along these lines, and to try and understand the past, and writing, in different ways than I used to (as you’re doing here!) If we are in the process of externalizing our thinking and memory in a radical and permanent new way, this is so imperative for orientation.
I definitely intend to upgrade my subscription, and to join you for this!
What a wonderful invitation! I am thinking too of the unconscious, all the memories that have slipped far below the surface and remain unseen, though still having an effect on us, even if we don't consciously remember. I am thinking about how to create spaces, gaps that allow memory to live. I love your marrying of memory and imagination, so much to reflect on here. I want to think more about this I'm relation to play, fantasy and dreaming....
Absolutely! Unconscious memory is SUCH a driving force of everything we do and create. (One of the people who’ll be coming in for a discussion on Zoom is an existential trauma therapist with fascinating thoughts about all this.)
Once you start digging in to memory, you realize that it’s kind of… everything?!
oh my goodness I love love love this from the first image of that beautiful painting through the vignette and into this wonderful winter invitation! We are coming around to the time of year when I lost a friend and mentor whose many dearly beloved eccentric habits included reciting off the cuff many many memorized passages from all kinds of weird old books. He'd pepper them into conversation where it made sense, with reverence, and they were reverently received. So, time spiral 🌀 synchronicities being what they are, I think I'll subscribe and show up for this invitation, in memory of Kim.
One provocation that I've been mulling over, re: the AI piece in particular: what kinds of remembering / re-membering will always be our terrain, will always necessarily be human, will always be inaccessible for LLMs? I feel quite sure that there are as many kinds as we have senses, at minimum. So maybe one of the things this moment is asking of us is to recover more ways of being geniuses than the word ways.
Just swirling that in to go along with that beautiful image of the tree. Thanks for this!!
LOVE this provocation — and yes, I totally agree. One of the great weaknesses of AI is that it’s grown out of the great epistemological weakness/narrowing of the past half a millennium or more; it’s the apotheosis of that narrow way of knowing. Which leaves endless amounts of epistemological territory completely out of its grasp.
So glad you’ll be joining us on the journey! Will be lovely to see you on Zoom soon. x
Gosh, Ellie, an incredible missive this is! Love the connection between memory and imagination, particularly "The imaginal possibilities we’re able to pick up depend on the kind of landscape we’ve nurtured within." So true. As a memoirist, I have to wonder: how many of us know ourselves and the landscapes we've nurtured in well enough to dive deep into the well of knowing that connects all life. It's slooowwww... reflection much of the time - and best met in community. AI keeps us shallow, curated by whatever it fed upon. Anyway, this is very cool and thank you for not recording the gatherings plus, perhaps, disabling chat while people are sharing. Just my take :) Bless your good and graceful heart, Ellie. Val
Yes! It’s this forever balance, isn’t it, between nourishing the inner world, in order to do whatever we can to nourish and enrich the outer, whether through our creative work or through our actions. So glad you’ll be joining us on the journey, lovely Val! And good idea about disabling the chat; that can be really distracting, can’t it? Can’t wait to see you on Zoom soon xx
I'm sure I've mentioned to you before that in 2020 I made a Horkos pledge to learn the first verse of TS Eliot's Burnt Norton – I ended up learning the entire poem (and most of East Coker), and it has fuelled me in so many ways in the subsequent years (and it's been nagging me recently, I need to renew my memory of it – it's almost entirely flown away – and to get intimate with the rest of the Four Quartets).
I spent much of my youth memorizing: prayers, piano pieces, poems. I required my children to memorize The Gettysburg Address, the poem on the Statue of Liberty, the American presidents. Now I wonder if my grandchildren are memorizing anything. I shall check in today.
This is so wonderful, count me in. I enjoyed our Blake sessions so much.
From an Irish pov I would like to bring in the term imbas. This is an ancient term for the training of Irish poets, the Filí - seriously important people in Irish culture.
Part of their training apparently was ‘chewing over a text’ which sounds a lot like what you are describing in deep reading and memorisation.
Thanks for this Ellie, it feels very timely. I'm completely with you - memory is essential to imagination, and vice versa.
I write a fair bit for a non-academic / non-published person, but the best stories that have come to me - just a handful - are stored in my body. I'll gladly tell them, but I won't write them down for anyone!
I would welcome the opportunity to develop a capacity for memorising-embodying other people's words as well, so count me in!
Oh, and FUCK A.I. always and everywhere.
Hooray! So glad you’re in, delighted that we’ll get to share another journey. Totally agree, about the best stories being held in the body. I hope we’ll hear more about that on Zoom soon! x
Looks great, Ellie. How memory relates to walking, place, landscape, and oral cultures, and the bridges between oral and literate ones, particularly the bardic mode, are of great interest to me.
Have you come across Lynne Kelly? An Australian researcher who relates the songlines (a fantastically deep and complex cultural mnemonic device which holds huge capacity to remember, for example geological events 30000 years ago...) to contemporary memory science. Her reflections on the ancient stone monuments of Britain, as places of memory/story/information/imagination (ie magic) make a lot of sense to me. https://www.lynnekelly.com.au/?page_id=1343
I would also include David Abram's Spell of the Sensuous (tho I think I'd include that in pretty much every conversation I care to get into!). And someone like Manchan Magan who is interested in this area too...
Thanks for this, Parsifal! I’ve never come across Lynne Kelly — will look into her. Thank you.
Oh I do want to do this. Where do I pledge? I need to find my text to remember, do you have any thoughts on the value of sticking to one longer or pick a number of shorter texts?
Hi love! You can pledge in the members’ chat, here: https://substack.com/chat/1013300
I think it’ll be easier to stick with one longer text, because you can put the whole thing in the same landscape of memory, instead of growing multiple landscapes. But I’m doing one short and one long piece, and several people are doing multiple, so it’s really up to you! x
I love this, especially the communal element. Practices like this are so obviously social in ways that silent reading and writing aren’t (though they are too). Would you have any requirements in terms of the length of passage that participants would memorize?
Hello! Thanks so much for reading. I’m not going to stipulate a minimum (or maximum) length for the memorized passage, since everyone is starting from a different place in terms of available time, cognitive makeup, etc. But I will share some guidelines about what’s thought to be a reasonable amount to memorize in that timeframe, and then people can adapt those guides as they see fit.
And totally agree about the communal element. It’s fascinating to me that reading too was originally a communal, out-loud activity, and that the shift to it being more internal and silent seems to have coincided with the shift to externalizing our memories. All sorts in there about being a body in a communal world vs being a brain floating alone…
Yes! There is a lot about this moment that gives me incredible anxiety, but if we are actually moving toward a post-literate, or more oral, mode of culture, I would at least welcome a turn towards more embodied and social / collective forms of thinking and processing! Difficult for me to think about, as someone so deeply identified with writing. And so many things I know I will never be able to let go of. But I’ve been challenging myself to think more along these lines, and to try and understand the past, and writing, in different ways than I used to (as you’re doing here!) If we are in the process of externalizing our thinking and memory in a radical and permanent new way, this is so imperative for orientation.
I definitely intend to upgrade my subscription, and to join you for this!
What a wonderful invitation! I am thinking too of the unconscious, all the memories that have slipped far below the surface and remain unseen, though still having an effect on us, even if we don't consciously remember. I am thinking about how to create spaces, gaps that allow memory to live. I love your marrying of memory and imagination, so much to reflect on here. I want to think more about this I'm relation to play, fantasy and dreaming....
Absolutely! Unconscious memory is SUCH a driving force of everything we do and create. (One of the people who’ll be coming in for a discussion on Zoom is an existential trauma therapist with fascinating thoughts about all this.)
Once you start digging in to memory, you realize that it’s kind of… everything?!
Thank you for reading! x
Sounds incredible!
Wow, Ellie. Listened before sleep tonight. Your thinking on all of this is so damned juicy. Thank you!
Thank YOU for listening!
oh my goodness I love love love this from the first image of that beautiful painting through the vignette and into this wonderful winter invitation! We are coming around to the time of year when I lost a friend and mentor whose many dearly beloved eccentric habits included reciting off the cuff many many memorized passages from all kinds of weird old books. He'd pepper them into conversation where it made sense, with reverence, and they were reverently received. So, time spiral 🌀 synchronicities being what they are, I think I'll subscribe and show up for this invitation, in memory of Kim.
One provocation that I've been mulling over, re: the AI piece in particular: what kinds of remembering / re-membering will always be our terrain, will always necessarily be human, will always be inaccessible for LLMs? I feel quite sure that there are as many kinds as we have senses, at minimum. So maybe one of the things this moment is asking of us is to recover more ways of being geniuses than the word ways.
Just swirling that in to go along with that beautiful image of the tree. Thanks for this!!
LOVE this provocation — and yes, I totally agree. One of the great weaknesses of AI is that it’s grown out of the great epistemological weakness/narrowing of the past half a millennium or more; it’s the apotheosis of that narrow way of knowing. Which leaves endless amounts of epistemological territory completely out of its grasp.
So glad you’ll be joining us on the journey! Will be lovely to see you on Zoom soon. x
Thank you Eleanor for sharing your thoughtful and thought provoking work. I am In deep gratitude.
Thank you so much for reading!
Gosh, Ellie, an incredible missive this is! Love the connection between memory and imagination, particularly "The imaginal possibilities we’re able to pick up depend on the kind of landscape we’ve nurtured within." So true. As a memoirist, I have to wonder: how many of us know ourselves and the landscapes we've nurtured in well enough to dive deep into the well of knowing that connects all life. It's slooowwww... reflection much of the time - and best met in community. AI keeps us shallow, curated by whatever it fed upon. Anyway, this is very cool and thank you for not recording the gatherings plus, perhaps, disabling chat while people are sharing. Just my take :) Bless your good and graceful heart, Ellie. Val
Yes! It’s this forever balance, isn’t it, between nourishing the inner world, in order to do whatever we can to nourish and enrich the outer, whether through our creative work or through our actions. So glad you’ll be joining us on the journey, lovely Val! And good idea about disabling the chat; that can be really distracting, can’t it? Can’t wait to see you on Zoom soon xx
Marvelous! Thanks much for these reflections.
Glad you enjoyed! Thanks so much for reading.
What a fabulous thing!
I'm sure I've mentioned to you before that in 2020 I made a Horkos pledge to learn the first verse of TS Eliot's Burnt Norton – I ended up learning the entire poem (and most of East Coker), and it has fuelled me in so many ways in the subsequent years (and it's been nagging me recently, I need to renew my memory of it – it's almost entirely flown away – and to get intimate with the rest of the Four Quartets).
I spent much of my youth memorizing: prayers, piano pieces, poems. I required my children to memorize The Gettysburg Address, the poem on the Statue of Liberty, the American presidents. Now I wonder if my grandchildren are memorizing anything. I shall check in today.
https://storyarchaeology.com/imbas/
This is so wonderful, count me in. I enjoyed our Blake sessions so much.
From an Irish pov I would like to bring in the term imbas. This is an ancient term for the training of Irish poets, the Filí - seriously important people in Irish culture.
Part of their training apparently was ‘chewing over a text’ which sounds a lot like what you are describing in deep reading and memorisation.
But really looking forward to our sessions!