Volume 6 · The Unfinished Syllabus · Essay 161
Method of Loci
A method is a promise: do these steps and something improves. Method of Loci keeps its promise if you keep yours.
Try it for a fortnight before judging it. Most methods die in the court of first impressions, which is the least competent court there is.
What this concept offers is a pause — one extra beat between what happens and what you do about it. Civilisation, someone said, is measured in that beat.
Ask any student of classical music. Ten years of scales before the first real improvisation. The shortcut generation finds this offensive; the tanpura is unmoved.
Learning is the one wealth that survives every partition of fortune. The name is new; the wisdom stood at bus stops long before either of us.