Dancing by the Light of the Moon Read online

  The term working memory is sometimes used interchangeably with ‘short-term memory’, but it shouldn’t be. Your working memory is what enables you to organize and manipulate the information that your short-term memory has received.

  Your long-term memory is essentially the storage facility where you keep everything you remember, from your date of birth and the nursery rhymes you learnt as a child to where you live and what you were doing at the moment of 9/11 or when you heard that Diana, Princess of Wales, had died.

  Your long-term memory will include procedural memories. These are the unconscious memories that ensure that you put on your underwear before your outerwear, tie your shoelaces without apparently thinking, and get on to your bike and ride it successfully – and on the correct side of the road.

  Your long-term memories will include semantic memories. These are the facts you recall: the date of the Battle of Hastings; the fact that Lewis Carroll’s real name was Charles Dodgson; the name of the colour orange and the fact that there isn’t a word that rhymes with ‘orange’.fn1

  Your long-term memories will also include autobiographical memories. These are the personal memories of what has happened to you: being fed mashed-up carrot by your dad in your high chair; walking to school; the smell of the sea when you first went shrimping at Broadstairs; that first kiss; that last dance.

  The Old Lover

  by Jane McCulloch

  (born 1941)

  Was I?

  Did I?

  Seriously?

  Was it so?

  Were we?

  Like that?

  Really?

  No!

  Some memories will be more vivid than others – because they were unusual, or traumatic, or especially engaging. Some will be more blurred. Some will be inaccurate, because you have misremembered or modified the original memory with each recollection or retelling of it and now what you recall is your later version of what actually occurred.

  All of these types of memory are jostling and jangling in the rattle-bag of your mind – and all these memory functions play their part when it comes to learning poetry by heart.

  I Remember, I Remember

  by Thomas Hood

  (1799–1845)

  I remember, I remember,

  The house where I was born,

  The little window where the sun

  Came peeping in at morn;

  He never came a wink too soon,

  Nor brought too long a day,

  But now, I often wish the night

  Had borne my breath away!

  I remember, I remember,

  The roses, red and white,

  The vi’lets, and the lily-cups,

  Those flowers made of light!

  The lilacs where the robin built,

  And where my brother set

  The laburnum on his birthday, –

  The tree is living yet!

  I remember, I remember,

  Where I was used to swing,

  And thought the air must rush as fresh

  To swallows on the wing;

  My spirit flew in feathers then,

  That is so heavy now,

  And summer pools could hardly cool

  The fever on my brow!

  I remember, I remember,

  The fir trees dark and high;

  I used to think their slender tops

  Were close against the sky:

  It was a childish ignorance,

  But now ’tis little joy

  To know I’m farther off from heav’n

  Than when I was a boy.

  Before you are born you can recognize your mother’s voice and the language that she speaks. And tucked up in the womb you can recognize the sound of music and the rhythm of poetry, too.

  Once you are out in the world, the learning never stops. You learn stuff naturally – simply by absorbing it as you go along – and deliberately, by focusing and application. What happens inside your brain when you are learning stuff is that, as the brain processes the information it receives, the synapses that connect the neurons grow and strengthen. The reason to go on learning new things is that the hippocampus grows new brain cells as it learns.

  Children appear to be able to learn things faster than older people, but that’s largely an illusion. There is less in the heads of the young to start with, so there is more to take in. And children, from birth onwards, are being actively taught stuff: from potty-training to cramming for A-levels, kids are in the learning business virtually full-time. If an older person gave the same time and attention to learning as a child at school or college does, they could learn as much as quickly – if not more so, because life may have taught them a few useful tricks to help their learning along the way.

  With some 86 billion neurons and some 86 trillion synapses at your personal disposal, you can rest assured that your brain is not going to run out of storage capacity.

  I was a friend of the actor, Alec McCowen, who, in the late 1970s when he was in his fifties, decided to learn the whole of St Mark’s Gospel by heart. He did it over sixteen months, learning just three verses early each morning, while he was playing the lead in Peter Shaffer’s Equus on Broadway and touring Britain in Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra. Once he had learnt the Gospel, he performed it, as a two-hour show, taking it around the world to huge acclaim, and went on doing so until he was in his seventies. He always took a copy of the Bible on to the stage with him, ‘just in case’, as he said. He never had recourse to it. From start to finish, he was word perfect.

  More recently, a team at Wesleyan University in Connecticut studied the case of ‘JB’ who, at the age of fifty-eight, began to memorize John Milton’s epic poem, Paradise Lost. Nine years and thousands of study hours later, he completed the process in 2001 and, over a three-day period, could recall from memory all twelve books of the 10,565-line poem. In 2008, the Wesleyan University team reported: ‘Now 74, JB continues to recite this work. We tested his memory accuracy by cueing his recall with two lines from the beginning or middle of each book and asking JB to recall the next 10 lines. JB is an exceptional memorizer of Milton, both in our laboratory tests in which he did not know the specific tests or procedures in advance, and in our analysis of a videotaped, prepared performance. Consistent with deliberate practice theory, JB achieved this remarkable ability by deeply analysing the poem’s structure and meaning over lengthy repetitions. Our findings suggest that exceptional memorizers such as JB are made, not born, and that cognitive expertise can be demonstrated even in later adulthood.’

  What that’s telling you is that, regardless of age or heritage, you, too, can learn reams of poetry – if you apply yourself. But don’t be put off: ‘deliberate practice theory’ is not as alarming as it sounds. It just means concentrating on the business in hand. And ‘analysing a poem’s structure and meaning’ is part of the fun of appreciating poetry: looking at how it’s put together and getting to grips with what it’s all about.

  The opening of Book 1 of Paradise Lost

  by John Milton

  (1608–74)fn2

  Of man’s first disobedience, and the fruit

  Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste

  Brought death into the world, and all our woe,

  With loss of Eden, till one greater man

  Restore us, and regain the blissful seat,

  Sing heavenly Muse, that on the secret top

  Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire

  That shepherd, who first taught the chosen seed,

  In the beginning how the heavens and Earth

  Rose out of chaos; or if Sion hill

  Delight thee more, and Siloa’s brook that flowed

  Fast by the Oracle of God, I thence

  Invoke thy aid to my advent’rous song,

  That with no middle flight intends to soar

  Above the Aonian mount, while it pursues

  Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme.

  And chiefly thou O Spirit, th
at dost prefer

  Before all Temples the upright heart and pure,

  Instruct me, for Thou knowst; thou from the first

  Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread

  Dove-like satst brooding on the vast abyss

  And mad’st it pregnant: what in me is dark

  Illumine, what is low raise and support;

  That to the highth of this great argument

  I may assert eternal providence,

  And justify the ways of God to men.

  There is no limit to how much you can learn. The one challenge as you get older is retrieving what you have learnt: as time goes by, there is so much in your brain that it can take longer than you might like to bring what you’re after to the forefront of your mind. It’s all in there: getting it out pronto can be the problem. The key is to keep at it.

  When you learn something new, new connections are being made in the brain. Keep using those new connections and myelination takes place. What does that mean? A myelin sheath is a cover (a sheath) made out of fats and proteins that wraps around the end of a nerve cell, insulating your neurons so they can send electric signals faster and more efficiently.

  Remember: whether you are seventeen or seventy, your hippocampus grows new cells as it learns new things – and you can keep those new things in play by repetition and practice. The more you learn, the more you’ll know. The more you use the circuits of your mind – the networks of synapses connecting the neurons made more efficient by the myelin sheaths – the sparkier and more efficient your mind will be.

  Learning all 10,565 lines of Paradise Lost takes years of application, focus and practice. Learning Milton’s sonnet ‘When I consider how my light is spent’ (page 88) calls for application, focus, and practice, too, but rather less of it. The poem only runs to fourteen lines. At two lines a day, you could learn it in a week. It would be brilliant exercise for your mind and it would give you a buzz. Literally.

  Learning something new is stimulating in every sense. Inside the neural pathways of your mind are chemical receptors which sit on the surface of some of your brain cells and release pleasure-giving endorphins as you pick up new information and process it.

  Learning something new and interesting for the first time gives you a high. With repetition, inevitably, the high doesn’t quite hit the same height – which is why, when you reread a favourite book (or rewatch a much-loved movie) it is never quite as satisfying as it was first time around – unless, of course, you didn’t ‘get it’ first time around. Small children like to hear the same story time and again, because, as a rule, it takes them longer to ‘get it’ than it takes adults, and because, as a child, there is something reassuring in the repetition of the familiar. It is part of what the psychologist, John Bowlby, the father of attachment theory, used to call ‘the security of known relationships’.

  ‘You are old, Father William’

  by Lewis Carroll

  (1832–98)

  ‘You are old, Father William,’ the young man said,

  ‘And your hair has become very white;

  And yet you incessantly stand on your head –

  Do you think, at your age, it is right?’

  ‘In my youth,’ Father William replied to his son,

  ‘I feared it might injure the brain;

  But, now that I’m perfectly sure I have none,

  Why, I do it again and again.’

  ‘You are old,’ said the youth, ‘as I mentioned before,

  And have grown most uncommonly fat;

  Yet you turned a back-somersault in at the door –

  Pray, what is the reason of that?’

  ‘In my youth,’ said the sage, as he shook his grey locks,

  ‘I kept all my limbs very supple

  By the use of this ointment – one shilling the box –

  Allow me to sell you a couple.’

  ‘You are old,’ said the youth, ‘and your jaws are too weak

  For anything tougher than suet;

  Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak –

  Pray, how did you manage to do it?’

  ‘In my youth,’ said his father, ‘I took to the law,

  And argued each case with my wife;

  And the muscular strength, which it gave to my jaw,

  Has lasted the rest of my life.’

  ‘You are old,’ said the youth; ‘one would hardly suppose

  That your eye was as steady as ever;

  Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose –

  What made you so awfully clever?’

  ‘I have answered three questions, and that is enough,’

  Said his father; ‘don’t give yourself airs!

  Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?

  Be off, or I’ll kick you down stairs!’

  Lewis Carroll was not yet thirty-three when he wrote ‘You are old, Father William’, but he seems to have had an instinctive understanding of what it takes to stay sharp and in shape when you are old. Headstands, backward somersaults, maintaining your balance, and arguing your case with your spouse can all be of benefit to you as you grow older. Growing uncommonly fat, rather less so.

  As you grow older, the bad news is that:

  the body does deteriorate (look in the mirror: it cannot be denied);

  the myelin sheaths around your neurons begin to erode, slowing down the signalling along your neural pathways;

  arteries narrow, diminishing blood supply to the brain;

  parts of the brain associated with memory and executive function (the skills that help you get things done) can shrink.

  The good news is: all of that only slows you down a bit – it doesn’t affect your fundamental capacity. It may take you a tad longer, but when it comes to mind-work an old guy can do everything that a young guy can do.

  Dementia is not inevitable. Dementia appears to be on the increase, but it isn’t. There are more people in the world than ever and in the prosperous world they are living longer than ever, so, yes, the number of people with dementia has grown, but the proportion of people with dementia has dropped. Why? Because, in the past seventy-five years since the end of the Second World War, people on the whole have had a better education and more years of it – and all the research suggests that people with more education are more resilient to dementia. Keeping your mind active throughout your life – learning new skills; learning poetry by heart – will help equip it with what it needs to keep dementia at bay.

  However old you are, however young you are, I am telling you: poetry should be part of your life.

  One, two,

  Buckle my shoe;

  Three, four,

  Knock at the door;

  Five, six,

  Pick up sticks;

  Seven, eight,

  Lay them straight;

  Nine, ten,

  A big fat hen.

  Eleven, twelve,

  Who will delve?

  Thirteen, fourteen,

  Maids a-courting;

  Fifteen, sixteen,

  Maids a-kissing;

  Seventeen, eighteen,

  Maids a-waiting;

  Nineteen, twenty,

  My stomach’s empty.

  When I visited the Centre for Neuroscience in Education at Cambridge University and looked in at their ‘BabyLab’ I found the researchers surrounded by babies. The babies, aged between two and eleven months, were wearing what looked like hairnets. The ‘hairnets’ turned out to be headcaps linked to electroencephalogy (EEG) equipment that was measuring the babies’ brainwaves.

  The BabyLab scientists know what they are about.fn3 As they explain: ‘Language lies at the heart of our experience as humans and disorders of language acquisition carry severe developmental costs.’ Their research is bearing fruit: ‘Recent results in auditory neuroscience show that speech processing depends on brainwave rhythms aligning to rhythms in speech, so the infant brain needs to learn to “copy” the rhythms produced wh
en we talk. Consequently, successful language acquisition by infants must depend in part on successful rhythmic processing.’

  At the BabyLab they are, as they put it, ‘drilling down’ into the relationship between brain rhythms, speech rhythms and language acquisition. And what they – and others at other universities in the UK and the US – are discovering can be summed up in four words:

  Hear speech, learn language

  The BabyLab is discovering how babies process sounds and build their vocabularies – and rhythm, it seems, is at the heart of it.

  The rhythm of life

  by Michael Rosen

  (born 1946)

  Hand on the bridge

  feel the rhythm of the train.

  Hand on the window

  feel the rhythm of the rain.

  Hand on your throat

  feel the rhythm of your talk.

  Hand on your leg

  feel the rhythm of your walk.

  Hand in the sea

  feel the rhythm of the tide.

  Hand on your heart

  feel the rhythm inside.

  Hand on the rhythm

  feel the rhythm of the rhyme.

  Hand on your life

  feel the rhythm of time.

  hand on your life

  feel the rhythm of time

  hand on your life

  feel the rhythm of time.

  ‘Babies got rhythm!’ they chant at the BabyLab. ‘Babies need rhythm,’ they say, more seriously. Speak nursery rhymes and rhythmical poetry to your baby from three months before it is born and forever after, and you will be helping your baby not only to learn language but also to learn it sooner and better, and to be able to enjoy it more and use it more effectively.

  You will be putting your baby – and yourself – in touch with the sound of beauty. Nearly two hundred years ago, the great Edgar Allan Poe defined poetry as ‘The Rhythmical Creation of Beauty’. But never mind the beauty, just focus on the bottom line: