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jon_chaissonWhat is the longest thing you know by heart (for example, a prayer, speech, commercial jingle, etc.)? Why did you learn it?
I know pretty much every officially released songs by the Beatles by heart. I'm still learning how to play a lot of them, something I'm doing while I'm writing my Blogging the Beatles posts, but I've listened to the albums for so long that I know all the lyrics and much of the instrumentation and can hear them clearly in my head if I thought about them (I'm thinking of the guitar and bass saxophone back-and-forth in "Savoy Truffle" as I type this). And yes, I even know "Revolution 9" pretty well.
I can also quote nearly all of Yellow Submarine if given a prompt, since I've watched that movie countless times since I was probably eight or nine.
The best payoff, though, was when A. and I went to see a version of Shakespeare's King Lear. Come Act 4 Scene 6 in which Edgar and Edmund duel to the death, I started quoting the play verbatim under my breath, much to A.'s complete surprise. And why did I know this one bit, when I can only quote small bits and pieces of other Shakespeare plays? Because of the last minute of "I Am the Walrus". ;)
I know pretty much every officially released songs by the Beatles by heart. I'm still learning how to play a lot of them, something I'm doing while I'm writing my Blogging the Beatles posts, but I've listened to the albums for so long that I know all the lyrics and much of the instrumentation and can hear them clearly in my head if I thought about them (I'm thinking of the guitar and bass saxophone back-and-forth in "Savoy Truffle" as I type this). And yes, I even know "Revolution 9" pretty well.
I can also quote nearly all of Yellow Submarine if given a prompt, since I've watched that movie countless times since I was probably eight or nine.
The best payoff, though, was when A. and I went to see a version of Shakespeare's King Lear. Come Act 4 Scene 6 in which Edgar and Edmund duel to the death, I started quoting the play verbatim under my breath, much to A.'s complete surprise. And why did I know this one bit, when I can only quote small bits and pieces of other Shakespeare plays? Because of the last minute of "I Am the Walrus". ;)
