Jim, I mispoke. Of course there are songs I can sing without having a prompt in front of me, but not many, and not as many as I could at one time. At the Getaway, which is two days of wall-to-wall workshop sing-arounds and three nights of song circles from after supper until....there is no way I am going to commit enough songs new to me to memory, and I do not want to subject folks to listening to me sing the same songs year after year. I only get to see most of these folks once a year.

I likely have a milder version of a learning disability with which my son has been diagnosed that effects the ability to readily memorize material. It is a dual-process involving rote learning and processing speed, which refers to how long it takes to retrieve information stored in the brain. (Was convinced I was never going to get to go to recess again when memorizing the multiplication tables.) Most of the songs that I can remember entirely without a prompt are songs I learned when I could still play guitar and autoharp, which I have not been able to do for years because of a joint condition. The use of an instrument results in learning happening through multiple sensory imputs and learning pathways that support and assist with rote memorization. Rote learning has always been difficult for me, and has gotten more so in the past few years, which I attribute to the normal processes of aging.

I choose to work on a song, practice it as much as I can, get the lyrics down as best I reasonably can, and then be sure I have them near in the likely event I am going to need to refer to them. I also tend to limit myself to shorter songs, knowing that if there are more than 3 short verses, I end up having to keep my eyes glued to the lyrics sheet.

Most of you have probably have the experience of occasionally blanking on the next verse or line and having to stop until your brain finds and retrieves the information.   It is like that, only it happens with much greater frequency. It is not caused by performance anxiety, but can create or intensify performance anxiety, and then the anxiety itself magnifies the problem.

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