The persistence of memory

There is a word which always makes me chuckle, although I understand I am almost certainly alone in the world in this. It doesn't reduce me to guffaws of boyish, screaming, apoplectic howls of laughter, but it does make me smile inwardly - the worst kind of murky, smirkish laugh, the silent one, which Dickens (understandably) hated so much. The word - brace yourself, and hold onto your hats and glasses - is 'lethologica'.

That's it. L-E-T-H-O-L-O-G-I-C-A. It's not exactly going to top any polls for funniest word in the entire world lexicon. Heck, it's not even up there with the likes of trousers or windsock, and certainly not fit to rub verbal shoulders with the likes of stopcock. But it makes me laugh. And it is for one very simple reason. Lethologica might be defined as 'a psychological disorder that inhabits an individual's ability to articulate his or her thoughts by temporarily forgetting key words, phrases or names in conversation' - indeed, it has been defined using those very words, on that ever-trusty electronic mine of information, Wikipedia. It is, in a very crude and general summary, the state of forgetting words. And yet the Oxford English Dictionary forgets to define it. In its online incarnation, there is no result found if you type in 'lethologica' as a search term (go ahead, try it right now if you have access to the online OED: I'll wait for you). The Oxford English Dictionary, it would seem, has forgetten about 'lethologica'.


Presumably, you're not at this minute falling off your chair in lexicographically induced hysterics. Nor was I when I first stumbled across this fact in my own empirical, serendipitous way. But I found it interesting, given the thousands and thousands of words that can be found defined in the pages - and the online pages - of the OED, that benchmark for English language information for over a hundred years. Memory, and forgetting, is fascinating. This little anecdote (which, in my waffly way turned out to be anything but 'little', and doubtless not very anecdotal either) is by way of a preamble to a discussion of memory, and the power of memory.

Specifically, I wanted to write about remembering, or perhaps even more accurately, memorising. That is, consciously remembering something, committing it to memory. It's a field that has interested me for several years now. How often have you heard someone say, 'Oh, I'll never remember that, my memory is terrible?' Or, 'I'm useless at remembering names.' Or (even more popular, and much in need of updating), 'I've a mind like a sieve.' Most probably you've uttered one or all of them yourself at some point - and don't think I'm coming the high and mighty, hoity-toity, lah-de-dah-de-lah-de-dah with you, for I can remember myself having uttered such platitudes on numerous occasions. But recently I've tried to cut back on saying such things, for a very simple but oft-overlooked reason: they're simply not true.

We do, in fact, all have first-class memories. Our minds are palimpsests on which we are constantly plastering new words, new images, new names and new faces, but what is beneath remains there. The problem is that, like the OED, most of us just don't make the effort to remember. Well, more fool us, for we are in possession of a vast, beautiful computer that is capable of making more connexions than there are known atoms in the universe. (That's quite a few, but I won't lengthen an already overlong blog by writing down the number here.) So, why don't we do this computer, our wonderful brain, the justice it deserves and use it? Why don't we remember more?

Well, most of us don't know how to. That's mainly the problem. We've all known someone, no doubt, who's said to us at some point, 'I have an almost photographic memory, you know.' Inevitably they'll have been some kind of horrible geek, some nerdy swat with a face plastered in acne whom we've tolerated more than we've actually liked, and whom we've listened to patiently before uttering, silently to ourselves, 'Yeah, and I'm Demis Roussos.' Most of the time these awful folk won't ever be called upon to prove their snapshot accuracy with recalling things, so they can go about making claims as to their extraordinary memories without worrying about being found out as Charlotte-Anns, which 99% of them will inevitably turn out to be. I must say I personally have a sour distaste for this sort of person, because they're merely stating (in exaggerated terms) what all of us can do, if we just make the effort: it's the intellectual equivalent of saying to someone, 'I can eat three Shredded Wheat in a row, while balancing a cat on my head.' Well, so can I, Lord Arsebook of Cheese, but I just never have. Anyone could do that, after all - with the possible exception of someone with a wheat intolerance or an allergy to cat fur (actually, now I think of it, that counts me out).

The basic point I am roundaboutly making is that we all have superb memories; we just haven't realised it yet. We all possess the ability to memorise things. You could, if you wanted, head to the shops tomorrow without a shopping list, and emerge from Morrisons with every single one of the items you needed - by carrying the list with you in your head. You could remember every single No. 1 single since UK charts began in 1952, or the capital city of every single country, island group, US state, Australian or Canadian territory, or other weird 'states' that seem to be popping into existence every few days in the South Pacific - indeed, I've done that one myself. And here's the good news: it won't take too much work.

Another anecdote, I fear, before I proceed. A couple of years ago, a man I know was in the pub with another man I know, and the first man said to the second, 'Write down twenty random words. Anything you like, from a colour to an object to someone's name to an abstract idea.' The second man did it, calling out twenty words which were duly written down on a sheet of paper. The first man then announced to the second, 'Time me for two minutes. After two minutes have elapsed, I'll be able to tell you every single one of those twenty words you just came out with. And not just that, I'll be able to tell you them in order.' (He probably didn't talk quite like that, but there you go.) The second man agreed and duly began timing his friend, who pored over the list for a moment. After forty seconds, he threw the sheet of paper across the table and said, 'I've got them. I've memorised them all.' The second man was, understandably, a little incredulous. How could his friend have possibly memorised twenty words which he'd only just heard, in forty seconds, and even more remarkably, how could he have memorised them in order? Well, the first man rose to the challenge, and I'm happy to say he managed to recall every single one of the twenty words, and in order too. And I should know, because I, smartarse that I am, was the man I have just described. My friend was rather impressed and has mentioned that event to me and several other people quite a few times since. He remembered my remembering, if you like (sorry, that was trying to be too clever by arf).

How did I do it? Of course, some of you may already know exactly how I did it, in which case, do feel free to ignore this and I apologise for having rambled on for so long. But in fact the technique was very simple. It didn't require a great deal of practice to master, and really only requires a half-decent imagination, which I was lucky enough already to have been in possession of. The technique is, in fact, so breathtakingly simple that I fear that mentioning it here will be a bit of an anti-climax, but nevertheless, here goes nothing:

Imagine you're given a list that begins something like this:

Tomato
Typewriter
Love

And so on, you get the idea. Twenty random words really can be anything, but those three will suffice as being, in my experience of bothering friends and acquaintances with this particular party trick, typical enough. How do you remember those first three words? Well, start by getting an image of the first word in your head. That shouldn't be too difficult: we all know what a tomato is, what it looks like and so on. So get that tomato fixed in your mind, but make it bigger and bolder and brighter than any tomato you've ever seen before. In short, make it memorable. Now, for the work (thankfully not too much): the next task is to link tomato to typewriter. How on earth could you do such a thing? Surely it can't be performed by the human brain?! Well, all you really need is a vivid and unusual image that combines those two things, tomatoes and typewriters, in lovely cartoonish unison. How about this? Your big tomato (now with arms and legs) sits at a desk and taps away at an old, rusty typewriter. No? Can't get that? Well then, try this: a typewriter where each of the keys is a squidgy tomato, and every time you press a key, that horrid gunk you get in those small fiddly tomatoes shoots up and squirts you in the eye with its seed-riddled disgustingness. (It really depends on your own feeling: getting your emotions involved is always a good idea, since we all know that it's far easier to remember something if it has some emotional impact on us.)

Your next task is the hardest of all thus far: you now have tomato and typewriter nicely linked in your mind, but what about typewriter and the next word, love? How the hell do you picture 'love'? As anyone devoted or bored enough will know from a previous blog of mine, I personally consider it hard enough to define love without trying to picture the damn thing. Well, let's stick with the clichaic, then: a big red heart? The sort you see on (pah!) Valentine's Day cards or in dodgy women's flats decked out on their sofas by way of large, novelty cushions. That's okay, isn't it? Love = a big red heart. Now, to link your typewriter to this image. But how? Well, by now you'll have sufficiently got the hang of this, I trust, to be able to come up with something yourself. My own suggestion would be your typewriter being thrown at a huge billboard image of the heart (which is no doubt up there to promote some garish, tacky Valentine's Day promotion in mid-December), and passing right through the image, tearing a huge hole through the heart. (To borrow from the wonderful Philip Larkin, I can't help adding, 'Now Fight Cancer is there.') So now you have the first three words on the list all nicely memorised, and ready to be recalled: say them with me now, tomato, typewriter, Geoffrey. Oh dear, I've gone wrong somewhere. But you get the idea with that.

My advice would be to try it. Grab a pen and a blank sheet of paper and go and har'ass (never harass') a brother or sister, a mother or aunt (do people even have aunts any more?), a friend or a lover, and badger them until they agree to give you twenty random words. Then see how long it takes you to memorise them all, in order. You might be pleasantly surprised. And the lovely news is, they'll almost certainly be astounded.

One final, useful application of this technique is, as I hinted earlier, that I've never needed to take a shopping list with me to the supermarket. Most of the time I don't even write a list. I just look around the flat and see what I'm running out of, and fix an image of each product in my head: milk, bread, apples, Kit Kat Chunkies, bananas, orange juice, pasta, Kit Kat Chunkies, whisky, squash, and did I mention Kit Kat Chunkies? I can't remember now.

I use another technique for 'writing' my shopping list, but I'm aware that I've already waffled on for far too long and it's time for me to make like a tree and get out of here, to quote the great Biff Tannen. But my advice to anyone reading this (you poor reader, you poor, poor reader) is to seek out the works of those better qualified and better at explaining things than I am, if you're interested in enhancing your memory and learning how to remember. A couple of very strong recommendations from my own bookshelf are Harry Lorayne's Page-a-Minute Memory Book and Dominic O'Brien's Learn to Remember.

Most importantly of all, have fun with this! And I wish you pleasant dreams about typewriter-using tomatoes for your sleepybyes tonight.