This is called the primacy effect. We also remember the ending words, the recency effect. What you do not do is easier to describe than what you do. A state of relaxed and diffuse awareness invites the happening. Long term memory fires off constantly and involuntarily, in the way that a nerve twitches.
Random recall is common, and associative recall is the fabric of ordinary awareness.
To voluntarily call up memory, however, requires finding the end of a deeply lodged thread and following it, no matter what you might come across. We routinely play memories over as dreams during REM sleep. One theory is that REM sleep increases the activity of neuron circuits which are usually dormant during wakefulness. In other words, memories which are not part of active, daily awareness are relived during REM sleep so that we can remember them when needed. The trick of artistic inspiration is to recover this buried material while awake, in all its cinematic, full five senses detail.