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How To Build Your Own Mind Palace

I’ve been using a mind palace since my teens and never thought it odd until I saw tumblr’s reaction to Sherlock’s use of the technique. A couple days ago I found myself building an extension in order to cram for my philosophy exam the following day and I figured I’d use this as an example and get you all exploiting the genius of this method.

UPDATE 20/1/2014: I’m afraid I cannot accept requests for further help due to real life constraints. Hopefully you will find your question has been already answered.

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Observations:

Look at the red and black vintage design telephone in Sherlock’s memory palace versus Mycroft’s real office.

Look at the table lamp.

In little Sherlock’s POV the lamp and the phone are reversed in position. This subtly signals to viewers that we’re in a kind of “mirror” of reality, yes, but it also tells us that Sherlock’s reversed the order of the objects on the desk. Is this conscious? In a traditional memory palace it would be absolutely. Sherlock would actively place the objects in an order that retained significance for him for recall later. So is this a true memory palace or is it some kind of other creature? (I think it’s another kind of creature but that’s another post.)

Images two and three are phenomenally interesting. They’re from “Mycroft’s” POV inside Sherlock’s memory palace. So we know something about the way Sherlock’s mind really functions. Not only does Sherlock people his palace with projections (like Molly and Anderson) but he also inhabits his own distorted vision of his older brother’s POV (This is the representation of Sherlock’s Super-ego.) Sherlock assumes multiple points of view in his own memory palace. Mycroft’s is quite harsh, belittling. (Think of Sherlock resisting John’s harping criticisms at the Jack-the-Ripper crime scene.)

The vintage real-life fan (5th image) is missing from the memory palace altogether. This signals its lack of import to Sherlock and its absence highlights the significance of the other objects on Mycroft’s desk, the ones Sherlock has chosen to remember.

In real life the square, fractured overhead light (a demented skylight? a sidewalk grate?) shines to the one side of Mycroft at an angle. In the memory palace it bathes the whole room and in so doing it’s repeated to infinity in the symmetrical mirrors which reflect each other.

From “Mycroft’s” memory palace POV the vintage design red and black telephone hides in the shadows to his right while the modern phone takes the very prominent position on the desk.

Look at the glass globe. In Sherlock’s memory palace it’s lit from the direct light above, the light that makes a kind of distorted chess board of the office with Mycroft defending the queen. In Sherlock’s memory palace the globe is better lit, but it appears much smaller than it seems in real life for two reasons: the real life camera angles, and the fact that the memory palace version of the globe does not rest on its real-life black stand (as it clearly does in the last 2 images.) I wonder if the memory palace globe is actually physically smaller than the real life one. (Did they use 2 different globes?) Why would they want the real-life globe to be larger? To signal that adult Sherlock understands the chess game to be one of international, global significance now?

I won’t make any conclusions about what all this means just yet…

#Mnemotechnics #mnem #memorypalace