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Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra
Arie Lipsky

"Jews sit down at the
Passover seder and
say we're going to
remember this event,
engaging in a multi-
sensorial experience
in the act of memory.
We've become experts at how to ensure that
things are remembered."

Mahler: Symphony No. 3 in D minor

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Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra Ann Arbor, Michigan www.a2so.com

- Joshua Foer

For All Special Occasions!

numbers and details, daily life
didn't change, and he still forgets
why he opened the refrigerator.
He kept to a strict routine, work-
ing out (his memory) for a half
hour each morning and then in
two five-minute booster sessions in
the afternoons. While training, he
realized he was memorizing license
plates in walks around the neigh-
borhood. His trainer's philosophy
of life: "A heroic person should be
able to withstand about 10 years in
solitary confinement without get-
ting terribly annoyed." That's a lot
of remembered poetry.
An often-used technique involves
elaborate encoding, based on
classical memory training. The
basic techniques invented by the
Greek poet Simonides of Ceos,
and recorded in a Latin textbook
written between 86 and 82 B.C.E.,
involve imagining a building with
many rooms. In order to remem-
ber an object or fact, it would be
assigned to a certain space that
could be recalled visually.
These structures came to be
known as memory palaces. For his
competition, Foer invented several
of his own — one a modernist
glass structure, another a turreted
Queen Anne. He also learned to
create his own mnemonics: The
more quirky and colorful, the more
effective. This is not a how-to book,
but readers may be inspired to do
their own willful remembering.
Moonwalking with Einstein — the
title is drawn from a mnemonic he
uses — is engaging and timely. In a
chapter "The End of Remembering,"

Foer writes of how memory, once
considered essential, is now margin-
alized. We barely remember phone
numbers, let alone poetry. These
days, information is stored and eas-
ily retrieved outside of our brains
and accessed with cell phones,
computers and GPS devices. He sug-
gests that we may begin thinking of
these memories as extensions of our
internal memories.
In conversation, Foer, who also
is the co-founder of the design
competition Sukkah City in New
York City's Union Square, speaks
of the centrality of memory to
Jewish life. His brother Jonathan
has written that for Jews, memory
is a sixth sense, and that line
resonates for Joshua. Citing Yosef
Hayim Yerushalmi's book Zachor
(Remember!), he says, "We're the
only people who elevated remem-
bering into a religious obligation."
Jews, he explains "are extremely
well practiced in a kind of mne-
monics. We sit down at the
Passover seder and say we're going
to remember this event, engaging
in a multi-sensorial experience in
the act of memory. We've become
experts at how to ensure that
things are remembered?'
For Foer, creativity happens
in the tension between memory
and forgetting. Looking back, he
writes, "What I had really trained
my brain to do, as much as to
memorize, was to be more mindful,
and to pay attention to the world
around me. Remembering can
only happen if you decide to take
notice." Li

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April 14 2011

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