"Excellent! I cried. "Elementary," said he.

 

Greetings dear friends. The game is afoot. 221B Baker Street, London, the most famous address among literature aficionados is a place which is not a place and that exists where it is not. Are you now walking through your mind palace to comprehend it? Well, that’s what Sherlock would do if I told him a spatial riddle but with a bit of irony because it’s a mystery about his London flat. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle created the unparalleled consulting detective Sherlock Holmes and his assistant Dr. John Watson and made 221B Baker Street, a purely fictional address as their residence. So, it’s a fictional flat in a real city (London), but it’s now made real by revamping a Georgian townhouse in Baker Street that bears a close resemblance to Sir Arthur’s imagined 221B Baker Street. Puzzled yet? The debate is quite big and so I wish to manoeuvre into the actual intent of this post, an attempt to understand Sherlock’s mind palace.
I fancy myself being a sleuth, but I am nowhere near as observant as Sherlock who packs ample information in his head and squeezes out those details to solve mysteries. How does he do it? Sir Arthur has given him a unique talent for organising information in his mind. In ‘A Study in Scarlet’ published in 1887 Sherlock tells John, “I consider that a man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has difficulty laying his hands upon it. Now the skilful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depending upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge, you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.” Sherlock keeps only useful information in his memory and chucks out the unnecessary ones. Though Sir Arthur mentions ‘mind attic’ to describe Sherlock’s memory, this technique which actually originated from ancient Greece is called ‘mind palace’. Mind palace is an ability to recollect visual memories based on location. When you need to recall a memory, just journey through it in your mind. We usually make visual representations of things in our mind, and we can take advantage of this ability.
Our minds are usually cluttered with jumbled memories especially in this era of social media with a constant stream of data at our fingertips. Learning not to be bogged down by irrelevant and unnecessary information is vital. We can make the best decisions if we learn to cull and cultivate the facts and information at hand. And Sherlock’s mind palace is all too relevant. Sometimes we make judgements based on information that’s been lying at the back of our heads unconsciously. It’s otherwise called intuition. People who observe a lot about their surroundings have strong intuitions. In the more recent BBC series based on Sir Arthur’s original stories, Sherlock says to John, “Intuitions are not to be ignored. They represent data processed too fast for the conscious mind to comprehend.”
Sherlock’s mind palace is a corridor with several doors that lead to rooms which contain memories. He searches those rooms to find memories that contain answers to the question at hand. It could be a thing, a person, a fact, or a conversation which could stir the deepest emotions. It’s probably harder, but it’s possible for the rest of us to build a mind palace with a lot of information to remember. And we could make it flexible too, move certain things out and move some other things in, shift them around, or box them however we like. To put it in another way, our memory can change over time. What we see, what we hear, and what we read can all have remarkable influence on how we address an issue.
Of course, we have books, articles, Wikipedia, and other digital files to avail oneself of. But for every choice we make, consulting these sources can be inefficacious. Or what if suddenly we are deprived of all technological access for a shorter duration. Would it affect our capacity to make solid decisions? Some would take fright at the very thought. So, we could hedge our bets by curating our mind palace. And if you have a gifted mind like Sherlock, you would be able to construct a very grand mind palace.
The mystery of Sherlock's London flat still remains. I think, at 221B Baker Street in London, fiction becomes reality for such is the skill of Sir Arthur’s writing. Having lived and experienced London, Sherlock resonates with me so strongly. I believe such recreations inspire making of new stories. And Sherlock would be delighted to keep his brain active by predicting what intriguing ideas today’s writers might come up with. I’m not going to do much talking for a while. So, I will take leave of you! I need to go to my mind palace.