Subscribe by email:I had to take memory classes when I was a child. I attended a religious school and was required to memorize prayers, important passages, and the church’s catechism. While I can no longer rattle off the books of the Bible anymore (I always get stuck at Hosea), I’d like to believe that the class gave me the skills to exercise my memory.
This card game requires you to find a matching pair, but only two cards can be exposed at the same time.
But did the memory exercises help my creativity? I’m not sure. All I know is that the memory classes coincided with the time I became interested in writing.
What does memory and creativity have in common? In Twyla Tharp’s The Creative Habit, she recommends harnessing your memory. “Creativity,” she says, “is more about taking the facts, fictions, and feelings we store away and finding new ways to connect them.”
So for my Artist’s Date this week, I decided to work on my memory. Instead of trying to memorize a passage or follow one of Tharp’s exercises, I chose to play a card game. My family had called it Concentration but I think it’s more widely known as Memory.
My memory was pathetic during the first round of the game, but it became increasingly better with each round!
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We also called the card game Concentration.
Sequence is another fun game with playing cards.
My middle son was fantastic at picture puzzle solving. He also likes Seduko.
Laurie, I haven’t heard of Sequence. I’m going to look that one up!
We call it Concentration and I was always very good at it, but I can’t memorize songs or poems or stroies to save my life. I wasn’t really educated that way, but memorizing was very big in my father’s NY schools. He can recite stuff that he learned 65 years ago. He can recite all of Poe’s Tell Tale Heart which he would do when giving my brother and I a bath when we were little kids. This could explain my passion for the paranormal genre.