A triggered, triggered memory...
May. 17th, 2002 04:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexpgpWas just downstairs, talking to the air-to-ground interpreters, when Leonid S. mentioned something about one of the Italian engineers in town to work on MPLM issues. (The MPLM is the Multi-Purpose Logistics Module, which is basically a shipping container that's launched in the Shuttle's payload bay and then removed and docked to the ISS for transfer of its cargo.)
That triggered a recollection of something strange that happened to me last night, as I was trying to fall asleep.
Shortly after turning off the light and lying down, I began to doze off. Suddenly, I snapped awake and said, very distinctly, "Avanti, Bartolomeo!" As if I were issuing an order.
I think what I said was "Let's go, Bartholomew" in Italian.
But I don't speak Italian (though I'm sure I've heard the word 'avanti').
In any event, I know no Bartholomews (period, end of story on that one).
That got me to thinking - I suppose trying to tie in 'Bartholomew' to something - and the end of my train of thought led me to Edgar Allan Poe's story The Cask of Amontillado. I was pretty certain there were no Bartholomews in it, yet ended up trying to remember a name from that story, but couldn't wrap my mind around it.
PUSH
Sometimes, when I'm trying to remember something, I can often identify certain structural aspects of what it is I am trying to remember, without actually remembering what I need.
For example, I might remember that someone's last name starts with "D" and is two syllables long. Or that a word I want to remember is three syllables long, with the stress on the second syllable.
Last night, the name I initially came up with while thinking of the Poe story was that of one of the flight directors at JSC - a certain Mr. Montalbano - but I knew it wasn't the right name.
PUSH
In the course of my life, I've come to realize that sometimes the best way to achieve a goal is to stop trying to achieve it.
Back in college, in senior year, I became interested in stage magic. Among the subjects I studied (but never attempted to practice) was hypnotism, which is often a sideline of stage magicians called mentalists.
Frankly, I was pretty skeptical of some of the stories I'd read. A typical scenario would involve a subject who'd been given a suggestion along the lines of: "Here is an ordinary unlocked door. It is shut. When you next attempt to open it you will be unable to do so. As hard as you may try to open it, you will not be able to." I found this idea specifically, and the whole idea of hypnotism in general, to be a bit far-fetched.
Then, one morning some time later, I found myself frozen into inactivity when my alarm clock went off.
I still recall with some incredulity my lying in bed, leaning on my elbow, wanting more than anything in the world to reach over and turn off the alarm clock. It was making an awful racket (which is why it had been chosen for service; its squawk was particularly raucous and annoying). But the more I wanted to turn it off, it seemed, the more frozen in place I felt. The more I wanted to turn it off, the more I couldn't.
I finally was able to turn the alarm off by forcing myself to lie back down and clear my mind of the desire to turn it off now. I concentrated on the texture of the ceiling paint. This disruption of my state allowed me to roll over and turn the alarm off.
I had an opportunity to consciously test this technique once more, albeit in a rather public manner.
As part of my "studies," I and the rest of my class attended a performance of "The Amazing Kresgin" at a local community college. I managed to be selected as a volunteer for the hypnotism portion of Kresgin's program. To make a long story short, he suggested to me that I would forget my name whenever he snapped his fingers.
"Ridiculous!" I thought, when he told me that.
When my turn came at center stage with the performer, he told the audience what it was he'd suggested to me and then turned to me and asked, "What's your name?"
"Alex," I replied, without hesitation. I was primed.
Kresgin snapped his fingers. "What is it?"
My mouth opened, but nothing came out. The audience tittered. My mouth opened and closed, like that of a beached fish. The more my mouth worked, the louder the audience laughed.
All of this took maybe 5 to 7 seconds, but the bottom line was: I could not remember my name!
So I focused my attention on someone in the front row and cleared my mind.
"Alex," I said a moment later.
Snap. "What is it?"
I forgot again, for real. I repeated my little trick, but held off answering for a few seconds (now, I was milking the crowd, albeit cautiosly). When I did say my name again, Kresgin directed his attention to his next subject.
My completely amateur hypothesis is that there are certain mental modes that one can get into where one is so anxious to do something, that the connection between thought and action is not made correctly. In both the case with the alarm clock and my forgetting my name, I was really "wired" emotionally to do something, but for some reason (unknown for the clock, and a suggestion in the second case) the progression between wanting to do x and actually being able to do it never was completed.
Furthermore, the I-really-wanna-do-this aspect of the situations (wanting to stop the alarm and wanting to prove to the audience that I did too remember my name) just made the disconnect worse.
So, I have come to rely on this little trick of clearing my mind and focusing on something else when I reach a certain kind of mental impasse. I have found this to be particularly effective when I'm trying to remember something that's "on the tip of my tongue." More often than not, what it is I'm trying to remember will pop into my mind in seconds, though this is far from a guaranteed technique. Sometimes, it does not work.
POP
POP
So there I was, feeling that the name from the Poe story was something like, but not 'Montalbano'. I cleared my mind, and in a few seconds, I remembered the name:
Fortunato.
This is a departure from my normal mode of remembering the initial letter of the name, but what the hey.
So here I am, running my eyes over the first line of the story and wondering who Bartolomeo might be, and why he reminds me of Poe's story (if he does at all).
Cheers...
That triggered a recollection of something strange that happened to me last night, as I was trying to fall asleep.
Shortly after turning off the light and lying down, I began to doze off. Suddenly, I snapped awake and said, very distinctly, "Avanti, Bartolomeo!" As if I were issuing an order.
I think what I said was "Let's go, Bartholomew" in Italian.
But I don't speak Italian (though I'm sure I've heard the word 'avanti').
In any event, I know no Bartholomews (period, end of story on that one).
That got me to thinking - I suppose trying to tie in 'Bartholomew' to something - and the end of my train of thought led me to Edgar Allan Poe's story The Cask of Amontillado. I was pretty certain there were no Bartholomews in it, yet ended up trying to remember a name from that story, but couldn't wrap my mind around it.
PUSH
Sometimes, when I'm trying to remember something, I can often identify certain structural aspects of what it is I am trying to remember, without actually remembering what I need.
For example, I might remember that someone's last name starts with "D" and is two syllables long. Or that a word I want to remember is three syllables long, with the stress on the second syllable.
Last night, the name I initially came up with while thinking of the Poe story was that of one of the flight directors at JSC - a certain Mr. Montalbano - but I knew it wasn't the right name.
PUSH
In the course of my life, I've come to realize that sometimes the best way to achieve a goal is to stop trying to achieve it.
Back in college, in senior year, I became interested in stage magic. Among the subjects I studied (but never attempted to practice) was hypnotism, which is often a sideline of stage magicians called mentalists.
Frankly, I was pretty skeptical of some of the stories I'd read. A typical scenario would involve a subject who'd been given a suggestion along the lines of: "Here is an ordinary unlocked door. It is shut. When you next attempt to open it you will be unable to do so. As hard as you may try to open it, you will not be able to." I found this idea specifically, and the whole idea of hypnotism in general, to be a bit far-fetched.
Then, one morning some time later, I found myself frozen into inactivity when my alarm clock went off.
I still recall with some incredulity my lying in bed, leaning on my elbow, wanting more than anything in the world to reach over and turn off the alarm clock. It was making an awful racket (which is why it had been chosen for service; its squawk was particularly raucous and annoying). But the more I wanted to turn it off, it seemed, the more frozen in place I felt. The more I wanted to turn it off, the more I couldn't.
I finally was able to turn the alarm off by forcing myself to lie back down and clear my mind of the desire to turn it off now. I concentrated on the texture of the ceiling paint. This disruption of my state allowed me to roll over and turn the alarm off.
I had an opportunity to consciously test this technique once more, albeit in a rather public manner.
As part of my "studies," I and the rest of my class attended a performance of "The Amazing Kresgin" at a local community college. I managed to be selected as a volunteer for the hypnotism portion of Kresgin's program. To make a long story short, he suggested to me that I would forget my name whenever he snapped his fingers.
"Ridiculous!" I thought, when he told me that.
When my turn came at center stage with the performer, he told the audience what it was he'd suggested to me and then turned to me and asked, "What's your name?"
"Alex," I replied, without hesitation. I was primed.
Kresgin snapped his fingers. "What is it?"
My mouth opened, but nothing came out. The audience tittered. My mouth opened and closed, like that of a beached fish. The more my mouth worked, the louder the audience laughed.
All of this took maybe 5 to 7 seconds, but the bottom line was: I could not remember my name!
So I focused my attention on someone in the front row and cleared my mind.
"Alex," I said a moment later.
Snap. "What is it?"
I forgot again, for real. I repeated my little trick, but held off answering for a few seconds (now, I was milking the crowd, albeit cautiosly). When I did say my name again, Kresgin directed his attention to his next subject.
My completely amateur hypothesis is that there are certain mental modes that one can get into where one is so anxious to do something, that the connection between thought and action is not made correctly. In both the case with the alarm clock and my forgetting my name, I was really "wired" emotionally to do something, but for some reason (unknown for the clock, and a suggestion in the second case) the progression between wanting to do x and actually being able to do it never was completed.
Furthermore, the I-really-wanna-do-this aspect of the situations (wanting to stop the alarm and wanting to prove to the audience that I did too remember my name) just made the disconnect worse.
So, I have come to rely on this little trick of clearing my mind and focusing on something else when I reach a certain kind of mental impasse. I have found this to be particularly effective when I'm trying to remember something that's "on the tip of my tongue." More often than not, what it is I'm trying to remember will pop into my mind in seconds, though this is far from a guaranteed technique. Sometimes, it does not work.
POP
POP
So there I was, feeling that the name from the Poe story was something like, but not 'Montalbano'. I cleared my mind, and in a few seconds, I remembered the name:
Fortunato.
This is a departure from my normal mode of remembering the initial letter of the name, but what the hey.
So here I am, running my eyes over the first line of the story and wondering who Bartolomeo might be, and why he reminds me of Poe's story (if he does at all).
The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge...Admit it. It's a marvelous opening line.
Cheers...
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no subject
Date: 2002-05-17 03:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-05-17 06:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-05-18 12:01 am (UTC)It didn't go into details about people who use several languages and the various twists and turns of speeding neural messages this would imply, nor about bits getting lost, nor about whether being immersed in one language affects the various 'channels'. It just left me with a lot of thoughts as I've been involved in some university 'bilingual' experiments.
The point I'm (slowly) getting to is that 'losing' a word happens to me a lot too - a name or anything else. When it's a language thing, and I can think of the word I want in any language but the one I need, I expect it's the message system having a short circuit. When it's just any old word, I also let it drop and it comes trundling back when I least expect it, so I expect I'm still processing it somewhere in my subconscious.
Do you dream in Russian? I know I dream a lot in French, and wish I knew where, along the 'road to being more fluent' that started to happen. I dream occasionally in German if I've been working from it a lot, but haven't dreamed in Russian for years (too rusty).
Also (sorry about the questions) do you find you forget, sometimes, what language you've heard something in, whether a film, song, book you've read? At times I remember clearly because of some sort of phrase that stands out but at others it's more the *notions* of something.
Let's face it - my brain is probably totally confused.
Memories...
Date: 2002-05-18 09:48 am (UTC)Our experiences in memory are certainly consonant. However, if memory serves (not to put to fine a point on it), it seems that almost all the information that was in my brain during my teens and twenties seemed to be immediately at the ready. That is, I either knew something or I didn't. This might just have been a folly of youth in that, arrogantly, I never really reached very hard for hidden information. Whenever I took tests, I was invariably the first one finished. Rarely, did I dwell on difficult questions or go back once a question had been answered.
As I've gotten older I find that I hit many, many walls where I know that I know something, but it just won't come to consciousness. And, like you, I've found that if I put my attention elsewhere it readily "pops" into my head. Unfortunately, as I get older, the interval gets longer and longer. All to often the memory will now only return during an unconscious state. How often I have awoke at 4:00 AM and startle my wife by blurting out something like, "Robert Colbert!" Fortunately, Internet searches have saved her many more of these startling announcements.
I also know that the unconscious was a definite enhancement to my memory when it came to learning long monologues and pages of dialogue during my acting days. Whenever I got to the point where I could repeat nothing more of what was on the page, I knew that, with a good nights sleep or even a short nap, I would awake with the information almost cemented in my brain.