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When I heard about how Ashley Strand memorized the entire Book of Mark, I knew I had to interview him.
His performance is incredible, for one thing. You can tell just how deeply he’s memorized this text simply by watching the preview for his one-man show.
As someone who has memorized a fair amount of verbatim text myself, I can tell by speaking with Ashley that he really knows his stuff.
I’m talking about the granular details of “the real work” involved in instilling large amounts of text into your long-term memory.
To help you learn more about what’s involved in a memory project like this, Ashley takes us deep into the process.
And some of the mnemonic methods he uses are surprising.
Or at least they surprised me as we first started talking about them.
The more I listened, the more I realized that there is an aspect of memory I just don’t talk about enough.
More on that at the end of this interview with Ashley.
But first…
Who Is Ashley Strand?
According to his Wikipedia page, Ashley began acting in 1996.
He holds an MFA from Michael Khan’s Academy for Classical Acting. He’s appeared in several Shakespeare plays and The Duchess of Malfi.
As a performer with comedic leanings, he’s entertained audiences around the world.
His work with writing and performing one-man shows is of special interest to those of us interested in memory techniques.
That’s because delivering long monologues from memory doesn’t come with the same amount of cue lines from other actors. As you’ll discover in our discussion, without having someone to help you during a performance, you won’t have any cue lines at all.
King James Live
According to Ashley, “the gospel was written to be heard.”
This is more than a cute slogan. Ashley’s made it his mission to bring scripture to life. So far, he’s fulfilled on this promise by memorizing the Gospel According to Mark.
You can find a DVD of his live performance on his King Jame Live website to enjoy and see the positive audience reactions. There are also links to free streaming versions of the performance.
A performance of this kind involves more than just reciting verbatim content. There are also choreographic considerations to be remembered, tonality and blocking.
Blocking is an interesting aspect of memorization because it merges with the Memory Palace technique, something that we discuss in some detail with an extended example of how Ashley memorized a list.
The Difference Between Memorizing A Bit of Scripture And A Lot
I’ve memorized bits of Shakespeare and smatterings of Biblical scripture. When you need to know a few verses and the verse numbers, this tutorial will help get you there.
My experiences with memorizing Sanskrit phrases relates to what Ashely has done. Whereas I’ve memorized just over 2000 words in Sanskrit, however, he’s done over 10,000. And that’s just taking his work with the Book of Mark into consideration. I don’t know the exact Shakespearian roles he’s played, but few of them are tiny.
For me, the big takeaways from this conversation with Ashley boil down to:
- The importance of textual analysis as a mnemonic device we don’t take stock of nearly enough
- Finding ways to use Memory Palaces to combine the journey method with logic
- Digging deep into the nature of your ego for a variety of reasons
Big projects like memorizing the Book of Mark may not be on your plate, but I believe all of these lessons and more of the details we discuss will be of great use to you.
For more insights into scripture memorization, you might also like hearing about:
- How Matt Barclay used Psalm memorization as part of recovering from brain issues caused by cardiac arrest
- Mike McKinley’s approach to memorizing Psalms without a Memory Palace
- Memory tips from actors who don’t clown around
- How actor Mark Channon won the World Memory Championships
Thanks as always for listening and I hope you found this discussion as inspiring and informative as I did!
