The Art of Memory
Added for Neotic Gathering
I’ve mentioned a few times that I use memory palaces to remember things. The method of loci. Roman room. Whatever you want to call it. It works, it’s been around for 2,000 years, and almost nobody teaches it. Some do and you can find good resources out there for it, one that comes to mind is the “Magnetic Memory Method” I’ll link it in the article.
School taught me to repeat things until they stuck. If they didn’t stick, maybe I just wasn’t built for remembering. Like multiplication tables? Dyslexia is a thing. I remember hearing “everyone learns differently,” but nobody showed me what differently looked like. It was just “this is how we’re going to teach you, keep up or don’t.”
The book at the top is my copy of The Art of Memory by Frances Yates. It’s not a how-to book. It’s history. Yates traced this technique back through Renaissance scholars, medieval monks, and Roman orators. They didn’t memorize lists. They built imagined spaces. Locations like theaters, houses, entire cities. Then the art of memory became a stroll for them down familiar lanes, through the houses of their childhood, through palaces built in the Oculus Imaginationis. Knowledge wasn’t stored in dusty tomes and in endless rows. It was stored in The Mind’s Eye.
That’s what we’re doing here.
I’m going to walk you through building the first few rooms of a memory palace. We’ll use the twenty highest mountains on Earth because we need something concrete to work with, and because I’ve already done most of this work... so it will be easy... for me :)
By the end of this you’ll know how to build your own palace for whatever you actually need to remember.
Once you understand the architecture, you can store anything.
But first, the bare essentials:
1. Start in the interior and work outward. If you work inward you get trapped. The 20 tallest peaks work good for this. You can always add 21, 22, etc. But you can’t add to the end because the end is the last one.
2. Use something familiar. A trail you’ve hiked a thousand times. Your childhood home. A place you’ve worked for years. Familiar. You can walk it with your eyes closed.
3. Action! The human mind is built to pick out what doesn’t fit. Is that a predator at the water hole or a deer? We attach gravity to things that don’t fit right. They stick with us. So when you’re giving action to a thing at a place, make it over the top.
My example from our last gathering was something like this. We’re on the top of Mount Everest.
(Honestly, before I continue, show of hands from those that were in attendance if you remember what we encoded for Everest, before you continue. I bet my hat you can.)
[React in comments please]
For those that weren’t there I said something like, “We’re on the top of Mount Everest, the tallest peak on earth. We made it, we got up here! But there’s an 88 foot tall bear up here with us and he kicks us right in the crotch! BAM, OOF. “Get down off ma’ mountain!”
The action encoded Everest. 88, that’s it. We could take it a bit further and say we did this on our 49th birthday. Big ole bear singing happy birthday to us, then kicking us in the junk.
1st Peak, Everest, 8,800 Meters tall. Actually 8,849. I bet you won’t forget it.
So let’s hit the trail. Just the first three tonight, but I’ll give you the whole list from 1-20 at the end.
The exercise is yours. You will not walk the same path I walk because it has to mean something to you. That’s the trick. You gotta care. If you do, you’ll remember.
Everest - 8,849m You got this right? That HUGE bear. Kicked us right off the peak.
K2 - 8,611m Damn bear kicked us down the trail, slipping and sliding in snow and loose rocks. When you land in the second place you get up, dust off, check to make sure you’re OK. Maybe check 2 times just to be sure. Meanwhile the Bear is yelling “You’ve been 86’ed! Get outta here!”
We checked two times and we’re OK.
Oh!K 2 86’ed
Kangchenjunga - 8,586m
This trail is dangerous. Bears, slipping sliding stones, but we still have to go down. The car’s in the visitors lot and we can’t fly. I can stand to be 86’ed one fewer time than I have been already. Does that make it 85 86’es?
The trail narrows. Sheer wall at our backs, straight cliff at our feet. We shuffle forward, careful, don’t look down. The nice thing? The rock here is flat as a tabletop. Perfectly flat. You could set Jenga up on it and play, though your partner would have to hang in the air beside you because there’s not enough room for two on this ledge.
Unless your partner is King Kong.
Wait. That’s not King Kong.
It’s Kang Kong. He’s very specific. “KANG, not Kong... man”. The other one is a cousin. They don’t talk much.
He’s holding onto the peak like it’s the Empire State building. Someone’s already set up a Jenga tower on the ledge. He knows better than to try moving a piece with his big meaty fingers. Those would knock the whole tower over.
Instead he leans down close. Real close.
The wart. Right there on his chin. Seriously gross. One single hair sticking straight out of it.
He uses that hair. That one disgusting chin hair. Hooks it under a Jenga block and slides it out smooth as butter.
You can’t help yourself. “Kang! Chin! Jenga! No way!”
“John. That’s a lot to remember just to remember three mountains!”
Meh. On the surface it looks like I’m asking you to remember a giant bear kicking you in the crotch, a two football field tumble that would knock you out cold, and King Kong’s cousin using his chin wart hair to play Jenga on a cliff. That’s way more than just “Everest, K2, Kangchenjunga.”
Except here’s the thing.
You’re not memorizing a list. You’re remembering a story. And stories stick in ways lists never will. Think of these as cave paintings in your mind. You can come back to them season after season and say, “Oh yeah, that big ass bear.” And the story just starts to flow.
Think about Star Wars. You probably haven’t watched it in years. But right now, if I said “Luke, the trench run, Obi-Wan’s voice, what did he tell Luke?” you can see it, can’t you? The cockpit. The Death Star surface rushing past. “Use the Force, Luke.” You’re not straining to recall it. It just comes back. Vivid.
That’s what we’re after.
When you try to memorize “Everest 8,849, K2 8,611, Kangchenjunga 8,586” by repetition, your brain has nothing to grab onto. Just numbers floating in space. You hold them there by force of will, and the second you stop concentrating, they drift.
But an 88 foot bear? Kang Kong’s chin wart? Those images are weird enough that your brain flags them. And because they’re chained to a place you can actually walk through, they’re anchored. You don’t have to hold them. They’re just there.
The palace is the structure. The story is what fills it. Once you’ve walked it a few times, recalling the mountains isn’t work. It’s just walking.
Trust me. Keep going.
You are never going to forget that Kangs chin wart. And that dude? Baller at Jenga.
Your homework.
Lhotse — 8,516 m
Makalu — 8,485 m
Cho Oyu — 8,188 m
Dhaulagiri I — 8,167 m
Manaslu — 8,163 m
Nanga Parbat — 8,126 m
Annapurna I — 8,091 m
Gasherbrum I — 8,080 m
Broad Peak — 8,051 m
Gasherbrum II — 8,035 m
Shishapangma — 8,027 m
Gyachung Kang — 7,952 m
Gasherbrum III — 7,946 m
Gasherbrum IV — 7,932 m
Himalchuli — 7,893 m
Distaghil Sar — 7,884 m
Ngadi Chuli — 7,871 m
Link as promised ( https://www.magneticmemorymethod.com/ )