Well, the original name of this article was Building and remembering mnemonic movies! :) But since nobody knows what the hell is a mnemonic movie, I decided to use the title of these lectures.
So, why mnemonic movies? I understand that memory palaces are an extremely powerful mental memory technique, but it’s not fun. The reason why memory champions use these techniques is because the real-life palaces are very rigidly imprinted in their minds and/or they can to go back physically to these structures, revisit them and remember what they’ve forgotten.
There’s one downside though. They’re rigid and rigid isn’t something that our imagination likes.
Why the McLaren 650S Spider? Carbon chassis, a great engine with enough power and I love the looks of it. The 650S GT3 is my all-time favorite GT race car in terms of beauty.
About the author. Ram Dass is one of the original psychedelic pioneers, he passed recently. His lectures are coming through the lens of an accomplished academic, extremely experienced psychedelic researcher and then… I’d say polymath philosophy researcher because during his lifetime he had researched very closely a lot of different philosophic traditions from around the world.
So, here we go. Let the movie begin:
Driving Targa Florio(my dream) in a 650S Spider, asking myself Where am I? Feeling the steering wheel, the jolt with every gear shift, my braking pressure, etc. Now a bug is on the inside of the windscreen. You’re on the super long straight and you watch it, thinking about its life. You can meditate on that thing alone… nothing else. Your gf is scared of the bug and you kill it. Life is so short… and you can be the bug for someone else. Just take full advantage of it. This bug was making plans for the future, but… it didn’t plan for the worst-case scenarios! It got into the eyesight of us humans… got smashed. And that’s it.
Now it’s starting to rain, you’re with semi-slicks. You thought that it was going to be dry and got the grippiest tire available for this trip. But suddenly, you can crash and end up like the bug. You can choose and get frustrated, you’ll have every right to be so… but nature is much more powerful than you and doesn’t care about you. If you continue thinking like this and not be in the moment, you’ll crash! There’s only one way to go. Leave frustration, injustice, and everything that went against you or your plans, leave it in the past. Be here, now! Focus on the next corner, nothing else on your mind. You’ll soon be in flow once again. Don’t worry, just trust the process & enjoy the journey. Just drive.
But that’s not enough. Happiness, play… they’re the ultimate form of presence. You are enjoying your surroundings. Whatever bad they throw at you… you just don’t care, you’re smiling and you can handle anything. You’re accepting the challenges with an open mind, open hands. You are enjoying being challenged, it’s another opportunity for you to have more fun!
So, just smile. Floor the throttle and have fun… It’s an open-top spider, but you both are smiling and laughing, while you’re exiting every corner, every challenge tail-happy, sliding… the tires are screaming, they’re happy too! :) You’re playing with the car, you’re playing with the present moment, you’re being happy while it’s raining cats and dogs and you have no roof on your head. The stereo is blasting, the engine and tires screaming, you’re singing… What’s the alternative? Most will say, don’t play with danger. We like to learn and then avoid danger, but that’s how we also build up walls, limits. What if these limits are not our real limits? What if we can have another approach, another way of accepting and using them to our own advantage?
Isn’t danger just born out from something that we don’t want to accept, something we don’t want to embrace? If we embrace this reality, then what you would consider as dangerous when you were rejecting the reality, the present moment, then it’s no longer dangerous. It’s an opportunity to have fun.
That’s all to life really. Take every opportunity, no matter what it is, take all there is from it, enjoy it as much as you can and you’ll live a life full of present happiness.
Finally, we reach the finish line, get out of the car. It’s sunshine and there is only one lesson – we can be happy doing anything, anywhere!
There is a story about how Ram Dass used to travel to different places, just because they were giving him different energy… and then he realized it’s not about the place. Home is always where you are. Enjoy it!
This is the mnemonic movie(yeah, I just came up with this name. Might be wrong, idk). I could have written an article like the book summaries of the other books, but will I remember it easily? I don’t know.
I surely still do remember the mnemonic movie I created for Marshall Rosenberg’s Non-Violent Communication and it has helped me… I think at least regarding books, for me, this is a better technique. I don’t just memorize, I kind of input feelings, past experiences, my passions, values, dreams, and unique meaning generally speaking. This technique feels much more richer than moonwalking with Einstein. Yeah, you’ll remember moonwalking with Einstein quite easily, but will you remember the meaning? Will you understand it and then use it in daily life? I don’t know. It doesn’t look very optimized to me for daily life. It’s surely greatly suited for competitions, but you go to the event and you need to remember the deck of cards for the next 3-4 min max. That’s what memory palaces were built for.
We will see, so far I’ve been easily remembering two such mnemonic movies for about 6 months :)
Now that I’ve put this one in writing, I hope I will remember these life lessons from Ram Dass forever.
P.S. I know that the experiences, places, object forms and obviously dreams I’ve used in this article are not absolutely relatable to the readers of my blog, but every memory palace or mnemonic movie is deeply individual.
P.S.2. The song of Delilah Montagu with Black Coffee and David Guetta is just associated in my mind with this chilled out sporty driving experience which some would suggest is a mad man driving while having fun :) Btw, I almost NEVER speed on the road. It’s not fun, cornering is the fun part ;)
Below is a map of the circuit. Piccolo means small in Italian, in that case, a 72 km circuit! There is a video with Jimmy Broadbent, the famous funny sim racer, driving a classic Porsche 911 RSR on it. It’s a proper workout on the sim as you can see! Sadly, Targa Florio was stopped long before camera technology was advanced enough to allow for a full onboard lap.
P.S.3. In the original lecture, Ram Dass is actually talking about driving quite a lot! Believe it or not, it’s quite a powerful mindfulness exercise.
That’s Targa Florio. I’ve driven the small circuit… 72 km long! You can see the straight from Floriopoli to Campofelice di Roccella – it’s several km long and it’s just straight! You can probably take a modern-day Bugatti and max it out… that’s where my mnemonic movie takes place.
Ivan On Racing 