h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

For once a semi-serious question.

I am intrigued by how memory works, and this has got nothing to do with the fact that I am getting old with senile dementia staring me in the face – I can still remember much the same as ever and still have a stunning inability to remember telephone numbers and ANY foreign words.

I put these two down to the fact that brains work very like computers (not surprising really as people make computers) and mine has a super filter mechanism on its Random Access Memory “Telephone Numbers?” it says. “Don’t need ‘em – they’re on your telephone,” and deletes them before I have even got to the end of the number.

Foreign words are different – they never get past the ‘firewall’. !!!DANGER – POSSIBLE CONTAMINATION – DELETE!!!” and if Fatima tells me the name of something to buy (in Moroccan), even though I go down the stairs repeating the word to myself, by the time I get to the bottom, the word has completely vanished. If – on my way down the stairs – someone happens to say hello, the ‘word vanishes instantly.

That’s not the point.

I can remember poetry – reams and reams of it – mostly rubbish but I never need a ‘book’ when reading to children as it is all there – much to the alarm and astonishment of the parents in Benshasha, where a good number of the children, whilst not speaking a word of English are quite familiar with The Hunting of the Snark.

However – I cannot remember one, single, solitary poem that I have ever written – NOT one.
Now, there could be a reason for this. Presumably, as I came from my mother, my brian might be affected by hers and I have come to the conclusion that, deep inside it somewhere, there is a ‘sensible part’, part that has NEVER been used – but it is still there lurking in the background. I think that this bit of my brain thinks like my mother and as my mother thinks that everything that I write is rubbish, this part of my system sauys “Ohmegawd – he’s writing rubbish again,” and deletes everything unceremoniously and without asking.

But – it is – I have recently realise – exactly the same with music. I would hesitate before describing myself as a musician but I have a love of music and have spent most of my life (until I came here) singing in choirs of one sort or another as well as (in my youth) playing in orchestras and bands. I have never had any problem ‘learning’ a part and, it occurred to me the other day that if you were to stop any of the music on my laptop (currently running to about 36 hours’ worth), at any point in any song, opera, syphony or whatever – I would be able to sing the next not.

Now the really strange thing is that – like poems – if I make up a tune (for instance setting a poem (someone else’s) to music – I can make up the tune alright but it INSTANTLY vanishes!!.

But – to make matters more complicated – I can remember just about every drawing (of the architectural variety) that I have ever done with extraordinary accuracy (some of the old ones need to be pulled out of the archives and dusted off a bit). The other day, I saw a photograph of a house that I altered way back in the early 70s and when I started thinking about it – nostalgically – it all came back and (I think), I could have drawn the plan - down to which way all the doors opened and widths of all the windows - everything.

I cannot remember other people’s plans though, as though my brain is saying, “Can’t remember that – it’s not yours.”

It is very strange and – to me – totally illogical.

Your memory - selective as it may be - works still far better than my from what you tell. Maybe it's because I don't read as many books as I used to do before I discovered the internet? Maybe a word on a screen just doesn't stick the way a word on a piece of paper does?

I don't know.

I think everyone uses a different `tree' to hang memories on. I think with me emotions are stored mostly with music and language, even find myself talking in song titles sometimes. I think we would all think differently if we used pictograms in writing, and might even remember numbers for the same reason. Glad I'm not a computer yet anyway... not quite..

You are absolutely right, Goldylock. Maybe my problem is that all my trees seem to have been clear-felled! Actually I use pnemonics to remember foreign words and lots of other strange 'strategies'. However, NONE of it relly helps to explain why I can't remember my own stuff - other than architectural drawings!!

It has probably got something to do with the fact that I am red/green colourblind!! That or that I was born on a Sunday morning!

When attepting to recall a word
Relate it to something absurd
To retain a number
Think of grades of lumber
Poems are retained best when heard





YB