"Flyting"

As Chris stated in class the other today, an excellent example of flyting or verbal assults appears in the movie Hook where Peter Pan and Rufio go head to head with some fairly comical insults towards each other. This also brought up the subject of rapping as poetry where you don't copy someone unless your a beginner: improvisation as variation. This idea comes up in Walter Ong's book as he says only the basest of storyteller's would never try anything new. But back to flyting. It is now apparent that one can witness flyting on playgrounds and between siblings. However, I have to agree with Sexson that the best insults around are Shakespeare's. For example Kent talking about one of the most disgusting characters Oswald. I mean come on. You can't get much better than that.

Here is the Homework for today: If you did not flyt when you were a child, flyt today!

Simonides' Memory

I found an awesome website on Simonides http://www.ababasoft.com/mnemonic/tech09.htm

Simonides mnemonic technique

This memory trick was invented after a grisly event in ancient Greece. Back in around 500 BC, a Greek who won a wrestling match in the Olympic games celebrated by having a feast at his house. A man named Simonides gave a speech praising the wrestler, then he left the banquet hall. While he was out, the roof collapsed, crushing everyone inside. though the bodies of the guests were mangled beyond recognition, Simonides could remember where each person had been seated. By doing that, he could name all of the people who were at the feast. Knowing where each person was sitting helped him remember who was there.

Simonides realized that he could use his imagination and a set of locations to help him remember other things. The trick you just learned is the same as Simonides's trick -- but you used places in your house instead of seats at a banquet table.

This trick helps you remember for the same reasons that telling yourself a story about the pictures helped you remember. You are connecting all these different things and you are picturing them in your mind.

With this trick you are doing one more thing: you are giving yourself a hint that helps you pull out the memory of something. Sometimes all you need to help you remember something is a little hint. When you think "bathtub," that tells you to remember "duck" (or whatever you put in your bathtub).

First, walk through your house and find 10 different places where you could put something. For instance, you could put something on the couch in the living room, the top of the TV set, on the counter in the kitchen, the refrigerator, the bathtub, your own bed, and so on.
Choose any 10 places you like, but make sure that you can walk from one to the next easily and in the same order every time. Spend a little bit of time imagining yourself walking from one place to another, looking at each one. Make sure that you can remember all 10 places.
Next, look at the pictures you are want memorize for two minutes. When you look at the pictures, imagine each object in one of the places in your house. The sillier the picture you imagine, the more likely you are to remember it.

Do the same thing for every other item on the list. Imagine yourself walking from one place to another in your house and seeing the things you've imagined.

Any time you need to remember a list, you can use the same set of locations in your house. One warning: creating a new list usually wipes out the old one. So if you need to remember more than one list you need to have more than one set of locations.

Try these tricks when you have to remember a list of things -- whether it's stuff you need to buy at the store or vocabulary words for school -- and see how your memory improves!

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Here, the notion of the memory palace is not only reiterated, it is actually created. Yates elaborates on this and even expounds upon this.

"Simonedes' invetion of the art of memory rested, not only on his discovery of the importance of order for memory, but also on the discovery that the sense of sight is the strongest of all the senses." p. 4

Also, I am greatly intrigued by the idea expressed in The Art of Memory that there are "two kinds of memory. ...The natural memory is that which is engrafted in our minds, born simultaneously with thought. The artificial memory is a memory strengthened or confirmed by training. A good natural memory can be improved by this discipline and persons less well endowed can have their weak memories improved by the art." p. 5

The Song of the Place to Itself

"The myth teaches that these sacred places are to be respected for their own sake, not for what human beings can make of them. Myth, in its most ecologically discreet form, among people who live by hunting and fishing and gathering, seems to be the song of the place to itself, which humans overhear.

Wisdom about nature, that wisdom heard and told in animated pattern, that pattern rendered in such a way as to preserve a place whole and sacred, safe from human meddling: these are theconcepts with which to begin an exploration of myth. Of these, the notion of the sanctity of place is vital. It anchors the other concepts. the stories remembered by the mythtellers were pictures of the flow of life and information most keenly. Once the power of the place is lost to memtory, myth is uprooted; knowledge of the earth's precesses becomes a different kind of knowledge, manipulated and applied by man." p. 50

Losing a Library

Kane's chapter on patterns continues further to talk about the importance of mythtelling. He reiterates the notion of conservatism expressed by Ong for respect for the old focusing on the tried and true as he states: "No wonder the natives say losing an elder is like losing an entire library." p. 38 Kane also informs how these mythtellers use their tales for purposes of practicality as well. "In traditional cultures much of this practical knowledge is conveyed by mythtelling. It is conveyed by stories." p. 39. I don't know about you but when I was a kid, I most definately listend better when it was in the form of a story and not a lecture accompanied by a pointed finger. Perhaps one of my favorite stories that demonstrate the very real purpose of some practical myths appears with the story of the white berries.

"This is something I was told as a child. If you're hungry, don't eat the white berries. But I never knew the story of Nanabozo who made that mistake one day, and had to climb a tree to escape from his mounting pile of diarrhea. Nanabozo is the trickster god of the Algonkians. His name is heard in the Algonkina greeting"Bozo!" I is a kind of "God bless you!"...Nanabozo teaches by negative example. He teachers by telling you what not to do. 'Nobody eats me! Nobody eats me!' the berry tree screamed at Nanabozo one day. Perverse as always, Nanabozo ate the berries on the white berry tree. Even the birds knew better than he did. soon enough, he was squatting on the lower limb of a tree. But the stuff came higher-it just kept coming and coming. He moved higher, then higher, until he was sitting on the very top of the tree trying to escape the mountain of diarrhea that was rising up to meet him. No, it is not a good idea to eat white berries." p 39

Kane Chapter One and Patterns

"Myths-stories about gods. That is the truncated definition which has been kept alive through the ages by literature." p. 32

"Because a people coevolve with their habitat, because they walk the paths their ancestors walked, mythtelling assumes that the stories already exist in nature, waiting to be overheard by humans who will listen for them. Such stories have a semiwild existence; they are just barely domesticated and so are free to enact the patterns of the natural world." p. 33

"This, then, is prehistory's definiton of myth. The definition directs us towards an emotional and philosophical language of coevolution with nature, a language that allows all life, not just human life, to participate in the ecology of the earth." p. 33

"The proper subject of myth is the ideas and emotions of the Earth." p. 34

"The mythtellers speak of the powers in relation to each other, and with an eye to the whole ecology, not separable functions of it. They know that each being has a partner, and each works off the other to its own gain, and in the end forms a pattern." p. 36

My understanding of the first part of the chapter in Wisdom of the Mythtellers entitled Patterns is that myth and nature are essentially linked in a way that if you seperate one, you lose the others purpose if not its entirety. This made me think of the stories of creation and journeys that many native tribes tell that use the land around them as their guide. The mention certain rivers and mountains and other landmarks to either reference their story or inspire their story. The notion that the earth is the proper subject of myth is also intiguing in that mythical creatures in my mind are often more of a supernatural nature. However, one has to take a step back and reexamine the definition of myth in that instance. Myth as stories of gods who created the earth and rule it seems to reconnect this thread for me.

The Muses Have Taken Over

System of Locations

1. Thermostat
2. Blackboard
3. Screen
4. Quiet Desk
5. Overhead Projector
6. Old Desk
7. Bulletin Board
8. Snowman
9. Weird F

Our goal is to now place a muse with each of these symbols around the room to help cement them in our own memory palace.

Ong, Plato, Socrates, and 9/11

Abstract Thought of the Day: All of our days should be 9/11's (not literally) - in the sense that you remember everyday like the days history "forces" you to remember.

Ong Orality and Literacy ch. 4: "The author might be challenged if only he or she could be reached, but the author cannot be reached in any book. There is no way directly to refute a text. After absolutely total and devasting refutation, it says exactly the same thing as before. This is also one reason why books have been burnt. A text stating what the whole world knows is false will state falsehood forever, so long as the text exists. Texts are inherently contumacious."

Also in this chapter is perhaps one of my favorite parts wherein Ong discusses Plato and his Socrates.

"Writing, Plato has Socrates say in the Phaedrus, is inhuman, pretending to establish outside the mind what in reality can be only in the mind. It is a thing, a manufactured product. ...Secondly, Plato's Socrates urges, writing destroys memory. Those who use writing will become forgetful, relying on an external resource for what they lack in internal resources. Writing weakens the mind....Thirdly, a written text is basically unresponsive. If you ask a person to explain his or her statement, you can get an explanation; if you ask a text, you get back nothing except the same, often stupid, words which called for your question in the first place."

I love Plato's argument, especially how text is unresponsive and there is no way to question what the author is trying to say. I know that when I am often reading Yates, it would be helpful for me to be able to ask her what it was she is trying to say with some of her sentences.

What do you Know Today that you didn't Know Tomorrow?

Question of the day: Why is memory a focus in a class on oral traditions?

So we have been instructed to go against what all of our mothers taught us from the ripe old age of 3: don't talk to strangers. We should talk to people on the street and eavesdrop on their conversations. Enevitably, unless you are a real creeper, after they notice you eavesdropping, you will probably be more than likely obligated to strike up some sort of explanation. However, I think the whole strangers things expires at least when you enter the realm of high school.

Also, we have written down a very meaningless conversation that I had with my roomate about a cooler of mine.

My roomate: "Have you emptied the cooler by the window yet?"

Me: "No cause there is nothing really important in it."

Now that we have indeed written it down, it is no longer ephemeral!

Yet another assignment we have been given is to fondle The Art of Memory and learn to appreciate it like the playboy centerfold.?????

Oh and a very intriguing quote for the day: Norman Marler believes that one of the worst things that has ever happened to the U.S. is indoor plumbing. This was very similiar to the argument against writing.

Once again to the Important Stuff:

Walter Ong Orality and Literacy p. 7:

"language is so overwhelmingly oral that of all the many thousands of languages - possibly tens of thousands - spoken in the course of human history only around 106 have ever been committed to writing to a degree sufficicnt to have produced literature, and most have never been written at all. Of the some 3000 languages spoken that exist today only some 78 have a literature."

Also, the invention of the printing press was one of the most influential inventions in the past 1000 years.

Keep it Esoteric

As Sexson said the very first day of class, this class is esoteric, for elite people so we have to keep the information inside. He also informed us that we have entered the ski class because time flies while we are discussing. More importantly, lets get down to business.



The Important Stuff:


The Art of Memory p. 113 - Peter of Rivena and The Phoenix


"Peter gives practical advice. When discussing the rule that memory loci are to be formed in quiet places he says that the best type of building to use is an unfrequented church. He describes how he goes round the church he has chosen three or four times, committing the places in it to memory. He chooses his first place near the door; the next, five or six feet further in; and so on. As a young man he started with one hundred thousand memorised places, but he has added many more since then."






With this we have been instructed to find our own unfrequented church by which to aid or memorization and we were introduced to two methods of memory: location and image.

The Nine Muses and their mother Mnemosyne (memory):


1) Calliope (heroic or epic poetry)
2) Clio (history)
3) Erato (lyric or love poetry)
4) Euterpe (music or flutes)
5) Melpomene (tragedy)
6) Polyhymnia (sacred poetry or mime)
7) Terpsichore (dancing and choral song)
8) Thalia (comedy)
9) Urania (astronomy)