MEMORY LANE

"a wine that talks: That's unique. It's a memory without rivals". (Foer 102)

I am roughly halfway finished with Moonwalking with Einstein, and thus far I have found it to be very engaging. The way in which Foer blends hard fact with entertaining narrative results in an informative, yet easy to read text. The most intriguing argument that I have come across so far is his explanation of the fact that the human brain is hardwired to analyze the world around us spatially, and as a result any fact can be made more memorable by "engaging one's spatial memory in the act of remembering". 

This argument struck home, as I have always though of myself as a visual learner. I applied the technique to the memorization of the 9 muses, and was pleasantly surprised with the results. By constructing my own memory palace, I was able to associate each muse with an image that reflected her characteristics. For example, Terpsichore the dancer is located in a ballroom, and Calliope is sitting on top of a mountain peak reciting her epic poetry. The image I created was quite simple really, it is just a hallway of doors, but it is the vivid characteristics of each muse that makes each memory truly stick. Within a few minutes, I was able to recall the all of the muses by visualizing the walk through my first memory palace.