Should You Memorize a Speech? Part II
Yesterday I wrote about the reasons why you should not memorize a speech. And then in my typical and, to some, irritating fashion of doing exactly what I tell other people not to do, I admitted that I memorize much of most speeches I give. And I asked you to consider doing the same.
There are prosaic reasons for memorizing parts of your speech — like your opening and closing, for example — as I wrote yesterday. But there are other, less pragmatic reasons for memorizing what you want to say.
A word to hardnosed realists: I’m about to launch off onto a purely philosophical disquisition, a speculative inquiry.
A speech — a good one, at least — engages the memory and the imagination, the two most fundamental markers of what it means to be human.
Memory is our storehouse, a database of what we’ve experienced and learned. Without memory we are quite literally ignorant. We’re incapable of functioning, incapable of loving or of being faithful, incapable of gaining wisdom.
A speech engages our memories in two ways. First, it calls upon what is already stored there. We simply cannot understand, much less care about, something we have no — absolutely no — prior knowledge of. And, second, it adds to our memories. It gives us something — data, information, a way of thinking — we don’t already possess.
There’s a reason why, in Greek mythology, Memory (Mnemosyneis) is the mother the nine Muses, the patrons or personifications of the arts and sciences.
Our imaginations, on the other hand, are the capacity to create something new from what we already possess. Memory by itself locks us into doing the same things we’ve always done in the same way we’ve always done them. Imgination, like Red Bull, gives us wings. It sets us free to envision something new, something different.
Any speech worth listening to bounces back and forth between memory and imagination, between the familiar and the fanciful, between what’s known and what’s original. And the bouncing back and forth is where magic happens.
Since a good speech engages the audience’s memory — I wonder — shouldn’t it also engage the speaker’s memory?
In future posts, I’ll return to firmer ground. And I’ll offer suggestions about how you can memorize parts of your speeches, if you so choose.
What do you think? Have I totally launched into woo-woo land, or am I onto something?
Tags: memorizing a speech
June 17th, 2009 at 6:06 pm
Here’s how I think of the problem, “to memorize or not to memorize”? Start with the end in sight. What is the end? To persuade, influence, or have some effect on your audience. To do this, you have to do what a great actor does — use voice, body and text to produce an emotional effect.
I saw Kevin Spacey do “Iceman Cometh” on Broadway. Clearly, he memorized the script and had it word-perfect, but he so owned that character that he seemed to be ‘in the moment,’ grabbing us and taking us on an unforgettable (and heartbreaking) journey into the soul of humanity.
It took 3 things to produce the masterwork of art — Eugene O’Neill’s words, Kevin Spacey’s acting (and memorization) ability, and an audience willing pretend that they were actually in a Bowery bar circa 1911.
Memorization, then is usually a “necessary evil”. Speakers need it in the same way John Coltrane needed to borrow the chord changes from “My Favorite Things” to transport his listeners into an ethereal musical realm.
June 18th, 2009 at 2:02 pm
Thanks for your comments.
It only makes sense to memorize something, for the most part, if you’re going to use it again. Would Spacey have gone to the trouble of memorizing pages and pages and page of script if he were only going to perform the part once? (I don’t know. Maybe he would…)
I memorize — and suggest people memorize — parts that they can use again. So I have a handful of stories I’ve been telling for years in all sorts of different contexts. Once I begin telling the story my memory kicks in and, strangely it lets me be more connected with the audience and more in the moment.
I’ve been watching some of George Carlin’s monologues lately. They are another example of a master using highly polished and memorized material.
May 2nd, 2010 at 12:09 am
Wow dass ich letztendlich doch noch etwas zu dem Thema finde, hab ich fast nicht mehr geglaubt. Danke sehr!