So, I’m making a memory palace using my old home, in which I have not been in decades and never will. I know the floorplan like the back of my hand and remember pretty well where different furniture were, although over time some things moved around from one room to another, but some stuff has also moved from one side of the room to the opposite side over the years and in my imagination they just fit and belong in both places at the same time. And for example my guitar was always in one room, but in my mind somehow it just really belongs in another room.
Now to be clear, I’m not competing or memorizing decks of cards or whatever, so the amount of loci in one room is more or less whatever for me, it doesn’t have to be an even or round number. The information is meant to be more or less permanently there. Zero plans on ever cleaning and re-using, at least for now.
So, i got loci more or less jotted down and over time I want to layer more information in the same palace and add more loci.
But when you do that, do you then also write down the added loci, even if the palace itself was already very familiar and established? And how much you leave room for an imagination when adding loci? Do you demand from yourself that they absolutely were there to begin with or can you more or less wing it somewhat with things that maybe never were there but in your mind somehow naturally belong there? Or do you mix things temporally, so that same table could be in two places at the same time in your palace because that’s what happened over the years? Do you over time pimp the place enough that the floor plan is real, but the interior is starting to shift to the virtual side?
And if so, when the palace has been in use long enough, do you then even bother writing down these new loci anymore as you layer more information in there or do both the old and new loci at that point come from more or less muscle memory?
I’m also kind thinking this because I read Lynne Kelly’s Memory Craft, very fascinating book, where she explained her 2 kilometer walk around the neighborhood where she stores history and she keeps adding new loci over the years to whatever rocks she sees while walking her dog and also uses things that are not there anymore, so I figured that if I don’t go to my old home anymore and regularly walk through the memory palace version of it, then I suppose it doesn’t matter if things have moved around or if they actually ever were there as long as my intuition is convinced that that’s were this and that belongs.
So, I guess my question is that if you have had same stuff, like an aquarium, table or a computer in different places in different years and somehow in your mind they just simply belong in both spots, have you ever experienced that causing any mixups or anything?
Do you just happily let all those loci be used because intuitivel they were there, although not simultaneously or maybe not at all, or do you prefer some more rigid structure?
How much you typically let the line between real and virtual memory palace blur, do you just let the image of it to warp away from the real place over time for as much it does?
I know there are no right or wrong answer to this, but I want to know what have you found to work for you.