Photo: Bob
The following is a description of a memory palace exercise that is meant to help create and maintain a vivid, specifically configured inner musical world. The memory palace, a mnemonic device with origins in antiquity, has been passed down to us as a time-honored and reliable method for internalizing an organized set of memory objects. As a practice, it involves visualizing a familiar house or other architectural environment, throughout which you have placed a variety of memory cues. You access the cues at a later point by walking thru this space in your imagination.
What I am suggesting here is the construction of a personal memory palace based on the layout and genre sections of the archetypal post-1960s record store. This is done in order to codify and remember the various musics you have learned about over the years (more information than you think) and as a means to bring yourself into deeper engagement with their esoteric dimensions. I will explain what that means below.
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