Memorization Reflection

To start with the very beginning of this process: when signing up for a slot for recitation, I hadn't chosen a specific piece beforehand and eventually decided on memorizing a piece by Tristan Tzara simply because he was the author who stuck out the most to me at the time. Following this, I revisited the Seven Dadaist Manifestoes and attempted to find a selection that was both enjoyable to me and was of an appropriate length. After copying down Dadaist Disgust and realizing that it took a bit too long to recite, I switched to part VII of manifesto 5 (on feeble love and bitter love), which struck me immediately with its first line's mention of "with eyes closed" and the closing "remember this example". Then began the actual process of memorization.

My process was a bit varied, but ultimately succeeded and I eventually learned all of the lines despite some struggles. Step one was to hand write the poem on paper, which assured that every word would be noticed and not overlooked. Then, I began with the first line, breaking the piece into smaller sections. If I may describe it using numbers for these sections, the process was as follows: study 1, recite 1, study 2, recite 2, recite 1-2, study 3, recite 3, recite 1-3, and so on. However, there were also certain tactics used within this process. My method of understanding things (in general) is very visual, so each phrase had to be transformed into some kind of image in my mind, no matter how abstract the original text was. (For example, I could still tell you that the phrase "said a famous man" corresponds with a gray man facing forward and slightly towards my left.) With this process alone, I feel like I got much closer to understanding Tzara's words and his explanation of the contrariness of dadaism. However, this method does leave a problem in that I could remember the concepts fairly well, but the exact wording in the poem was a bit more difficult to regurgitate. To aid with this, I often used abbreviations, for example with "they will never get done", I had to remember the initials g.d. for "get done" so that I would not accidentally say something like "finish", "be done", etc.

There is also something about persuasion in the act of memorization. I always took dadaism as a sort of oddity, but having to repeat numerous times that it is the normal state of man, in a way, made me believe it (at least for that moment in time). I suppose there is a certain truth contained in the act of recitation that isn't necessarily involved when you are only reading the words from the page.

As a final side-note, I initially thought that choosing a more prose-like piece would overlook the sound aspect of my reading and that essentially, I would learn nothing new about the sound of the piece because it did not seem vital (whereas sound is more emphasized in McClure, Cage, etc.). I was corrected when I had to make some decisions of intonation, choosing which syllables to stress, which has the capability of changing the meaning of the text. I attempted to enter the mindset of "what would Tzara say", but I do not doubt that my decisions of intonation were ultimately controlled by myself, whether they were ultimately "accurate" or not.