Continual plodders

The Bard constantly colors my world

So Jamie's first trip to America was a series of milestones in both of our lives. It's all been so joyous that our hearts, notwithstanding their capacity, receiveth as the sea, and we can barely comprehend our own happiness. Long story short, by the time we actually finally recited that Romeo and Juliet sonnet together (live and in person!), we were engaged.

*SQUEE*

I immediately conjured Shakespearean lines in my mind for use in my future wedding vows:

What worthy blessing can be

but our imaginations may make it ours?

And being here thus together, 

we are an endless mine to one another...

Context alert: Ok, sure it's from The Two Noble Kinsmen and it's a dude talking to his male cousin about being together in prison for the remainder of their lives only seconds before a woman walks onto the stage and causes them to quarrel like rutting stags, but it sounds romantic lifted out of the speech, ALRIGHT?

Anyhoo...

Our parting was sickly sweet sorrow (how intimately I understand that line now!). So, I decided to mark the countdown until our next reunion on Christmas Eve by rehashing my current list of 47 speeches every day. Well, nearly every day, since the countdown began with 64 days, so I've taken some weekends off. However, I'm right on target to do some serious recitations on a consistent basis. 

In plodding away, I've found that I've reached a new plateau with the memory skills. Most every line I practice comes out faster and with more confidence than ever before. It feels almost effortless, but that's what over 17 months of constant exposure will do for you! 

I concentrate on one speech every night, reciting it to myself just before bed, then several times in the car on the way to work. Any given speech trips off my lips at least ten times in 24 hours. I also double back whenever I'm in an especially good mood, and practice that week's past speeches. 

The effect it's had on my understanding of rhythm and language is beyond my measure, and the familiarity truly brings new insight into the written and spoken word. I encounter prose, lyrics, and poetry so differently now. I notice the structure and nuance of everything I read and hear far more clearly, and it shapes my personal compositions in definitive ways. 

It has been most rewarding to continue this project. Though I don't post as often as I used to, I promise that these words and images have profoundly colored my daily mindscape. It's always folding around my thoughts, always making me grateful that I pushed myself to start this journey, as it has enriched my life in ways I never could have imagined.

Continual plodders ever won...

'Tis in my memory lock'd

MEMORIZATION UPDATE:

When my summer vacation began last week, I had spent 40-some days re-upping my memory. I did this by randomly repeating one of my speeches every day in my head or out loud in the car or to my bird or my orchids or whenever I deemed it an occasion that wouldn't out me as A) schizophrenic or B) hopelessly eccentric.

So, having done that, I sat down and tested myself. I picked my little strips from the bag at random and repeated them if I could. If a chosen speech wasn't immediate on my tongue, I'd set it aside. Turns out, I  knew 25 of the speeches with no cheating (not bad!). The rest, I still needed some prompting, but for the most part, I had them down.

For the last week, I've taken my weaker speeches and decided to practice two of them a day. I should finish with this in the next few days, and then I'll test myself again. I'm doing all this because I've resolved to get all these suckers down before I move on to any new ones. I've also resolved that after I'm satisfied with myself on the former, I shall repeat one a day again, at least two times, for as long as I live. Already, there are 20-something speeches that are no longer much of a challenge, and have moved on into the realm of being simply pleasant to hear oneself recite.

One day, this will be the ultimate parlour trick. I will ask friends to call out a play and I'll effortlessly recite my piece. But in the everyday sense, this has already proven advantageous for my brain. I encounter things during the day that conjure up certain lines, adding depth and feeling to special moments or creating profound associations. I'll read or hear something in a book or movie and immediately recognize a reference to one of the plays, and because I know some of a character's words, I have a more emotional connection to their story.

Another predictable effect of this project has been that when reading or watching the plays, the language barrier is now practically nonexistent. I now have an innate feel for the rhythms and a familiarity with the terminology--something that normally trips people up when it comes to studying Shakespeare. Shakespearean performers have a distinct advantage over the rest of us because of this.

I believe that this humble project has undoubtedly fostered a dynamic understanding of the text. It's enough to make me suggest that teachers REQUIRE students in schools to memorize some Shakespeare, even if it is one speech from the play they are studying. And not an anemic speech, either; a beefy, substantial one that can give you a true feel for the lyricism and weight of the words.

My narrative film professor at UF made us unpack an entire film for our thesis. We had to focus in on tiny details in a scene with laser-precision. It was his method of getting us to see films at all angles and develop our ability to analyze features we never paid attention to before. This same technique should be applied to Shakespeare. This is why I adore Chop Bard so much. I gives modern readers exactly what we need to see all the sparkling facets Shakespeare polishes for our pleasure.

If you're a fan of Shakespeare, you owe it to yourself to carry some words around with you. It's so achievable, you'll kick yourself if you don't try it ;)

Such stuff as dreams are made on

Our memories are rounded in a sleep

Let an astrophysicist teach you a little something about learning Shakespeare. Yes, Neil deGrasse Tyson has helped me on my journey toward good memorization. The above video, which explains what biologists are finding out about the function of sleep in all animals' lives, points out that sleep is more than just rest. Sleep is like the great defragmenter of our brains, rearranging our memories of the day, organizing our jumbled thoughts and helping us access new memories more efficiently.

Just as Neil does in the video, I perform new memory tasks (repeating my speech of the week) right before bed. As I'm drifting off, I read the speech in my mind's eye. The next morning, while driving to work, I make myself repeat the speech at least two times without assistance. I find it works better than practicing in the middle of the day and expecting the same results. The lines I learned tend to get mixed up and lost with all the other events of the day. But when shoehorning some Shakespeare in before bed, the lines are more clear to me the next day.

After weeks and weeks of doing this on my own, I found this recent Talk of the Nation story on sleep and memory. Some subjects were trained in the morning and tested later in the day, and others were trained in the evening and tested the next morning. The study confirms what Neil's colleagues found; we tend to perform better with memory tasks if we are allowed to "sleep on it" before testing our recall.

I like to think of memories as tire tracks in a dirt road. The more the car or bike runs through that exact path, the deeper the grooves become. Also, the more your verbalize, the more than words become facial muscle memory, much as an athlete strives to achieve when drilling with a specified set of movements.

I can't tell you how many repetitions it takes to achieve an expert ease with a speech, but it's probably in the thousands. The first speech I ever deliberately memorized, Hamlet's "To be or not to be," took a few weeks to get down and I have often repeated it to myself over the years. I can do that one upside-down, drunk as a sailor if I have to.

Nowadays, it's a bit more scientific. On the first day, I start with four-line chunks. I usually repeat them until I can say them with my eyes closed (~10 times). By the time I've got all the lines of the speech down, I've probably repeated it all about 20-30 times total. Just before bed, I say it at least two more times. The next morning, two more times. After dinner, five to ten times, plus at least two more before bed, depending on how long it is and how tired I get. Over six days, that's well over 100 repetitions of a full speech in a week.

I often revisit old speeches from weeks before to keep them fresh. The grooves get filled in with rain and mud and I have to keep rolling through them. I've managed to add a handful of newer speeches to the "I can do it in my sleep" list, such as King Henry V's "Unto the breach" and Berowne's "Why? all delights are vain." Richard III's opening soliloquy is almost there as well as "All the world's a stage."

Sometimes, I feel like I'll NEVER get a certain speech as trippingly as that first one, but I've proven myself wrong already. It's a shocking, fantastic feeling, and I highly recommend it.