Memorize something (worth memorizing)

When you know it by heart, you know it for good

How many things do you know by heart?

Your first thought might be “not much,” but my guess is that you’ve actually got a reasonable number of texts memorized in one form or another. If you’re American, you could probably recite the Pledge of Allegiance (or the equivalent from your country). You could sing “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Most of us have a few Christmas songs fully memorized (it’s a time of year when people sing the same songs over and over) and, if pressed, we might be able to cough up a song or chant from an alma mater.

Even if you’re quite familiar with a set of words, memorizing them takes this knowledge to a new level. It also opens up new options for sharing the words and experiencing them together. We didn’t need song books to sing Christmas carols as a family this year — we just stood around the kitchen and sang them! One reason I memorized the various versions of my basic time management speech is that as long as I’m there, the speech can happen, no matter the venue, the screen situation, if there’s a power outage, if it’s light enough to see notes, or if my laptop died two seconds before.

In any case, if you’ve got a text that’s important to you for one reason or another, why not try to learn it by heart, so you can recite it from memory? This is a time of year with a lot of religious holidays, and memorizing parts of the Passover celebration or an account of the resurrection from the gospels can help make those stories more meaningful. A poem can go places that prose can not, so why not try memorizing one that speaks to you, or at least one that is fun? I memorized some chunks of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven years ago because, wow, that’s got some fancy word-work. I like entertaining my kids with “Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer, swung by seraphim whose footfalls tinkled on the tufted floor.”

(That stanza also has the giggle-inducing word “quaff.”)

If nothing else, you’ll have something ready-made to perform at a talent show, should the need ever arise.

I also find that memorizing things stretches my brain in a different way than normal life. Maybe it feels like you don’t have the brain space, but I’m guessing if the opening chords from a song you loved in high school started playing, you’d be able to sing along. It’s all in there somewhere; there’s more space in our memories than we think.

Why not choose something short this weekend and try to pack a little more in? If you’ve got a family, maybe you can all memorize something short and have a poetry slam around the dinner table on Sunday night. If nothing else, it will be memorable!

Now I’m off to go memorize a few more stanzas about that lost Lenore…