My job involves me in thinking about how best to help people to learn things. It's pretty well documented that if 'right brain' hooks (ie connections with the creative) can be made then information is more likely to be retained. I was at a seminar about this 'brain friendly' learning recently and I brought up the subject of learning words of songs. I didn't get much at the time but later received some interesting stuff with a few ideas that may be worth thinking about. If anybody's interested please p-mail me.

There's also good reasons why our eyes wander when we're trying to remember something, to do with how we first encountered the information and how we learned it (ie by listening to it, seeing it on the page and so on).

I regularly forget lines as well and use cribs, although I usually feel guilty about it. Somebody made some mocking remark the other night about my 'safety net' and then promptly forgot the words to their song. I know what I prefer.

I can usually tie my forgetting of lines in with some distraction - that chord didn't sound right, what am I doing next, why is that person in the front row frowning, what is the meaning of life. Any distractions LA?

I saw the Sting concert as well. What worried me was why he turned the page between 'Rox...' and '..anne'!