head-writing whilst on the move

[butters]

this is spurred by Liar's 'recession' thread but it just occurred to me and so i'm dropping it here.

some of you mentioned that traveling in your cars is often a spur to writing.

i've just realised that the poems that crop up as i'm walking places, to work or to the shops, for example, are most frequently set to the rhythm of my feet as i'm walking.

i wonder if those of you composing in your cars are affected by the sounds of your engines ... the notes it produces at various speeds over differing road surfaces, the tones it produces at idle or when moving up through the gears ... tonal qualities, rhythms the engine produces or the road surfaces create... wordless music that you then begin to compose to without wondering why that happens

what do you think? is this the case for you people?

 

[vrosej10]

this is spurred by Liar's 'recession' thread but it just occurred to me and so i'm dropping it here.

some of you mentioned that traveling in your cars is often a spur to writing.

i've just realised that the poems that crop up as i'm walking places, to work or to the shops, for example, are most frequently set to the rhythm of my feet as i'm walking.

i wonder if those of you composing in your cars are affected by the sounds of your engines ... the notes it produces at various speeds over differing road surfaces, the tones it produces at idle or when moving up through the gears ... tonal qualities, rhythms the engine produces or the road surfaces create... wordless music that you then begin to compose to without wondering why that happens

what do you think? is this the case for you people?

I have composed a lot of my best stuff whilst walking. In fact if I am booged or blocked I'll go for a long walk. It always helps though not in predictable ways. I was writing a play for uni, went for a walk to overcome a plot issue, got a cracking poem instead that wound up being incorporated into the play as part of the dialogue for a new character that solved the plot problem. I am almost never in a car so can't comment on that.

 

[butters]

I have composed a lot of my best stuff whilst walking. In fact if I am booged or blocked I'll go for a long walk. It always helps though not in predictable ways. I was writing a play for uni, went for a walk to overcome a plot issue, got a cracking poem instead that wound up being incorporated into the play as part of the dialogue for a new character that solved the plot problem. I am almost never in a car so can't comment on that.

so,v, if you have to dissect that event, what do you think spurred it?

was it the freeing up of your mind to allow creativity time to play, or was it the surroundings' influence that soothed and opened doorways, or sound/rhythm of your footsteps? maybe the rhythm acts almost like a metronome, adding tempo without you having to think consciously about it - OR... as a trick to distract the sort of 'get in the way' thinking... so it engages that disruptive part of your consciousness, allowing the creative part more egress

 

[vrosej10]

so,v, if you have to dissect that event, what do you think spurred it?

was it the freeing up of your mind to allow creativity time to play, or was it the surroundings' influence that soothed and opened doorways, or sound/rhythm of your footsteps? maybe the rhythm acts almost like a metronome, adding tempo without you having to think consciously about it - OR... as a trick to distract the sort of 'get in the way' thinking... so it engages that disruptive part of your consciousness, allowing the creative part more egress

I believe it frees the mind to play. There is this theory in meditation that the conscious mind is like a five year old and that five year old screaming over the top of its grandmother, the subconscious. Give the little en an engaging toy (physical activity) it will shut up and let you hear grandma. I am a fan of walking as meditation as well as an outlet for creativity.

I actually think the event was spurred by me playing with sounds in my head instead of concentrating on the play. I'd been reading some sonic theory and it musta mixed with stuff I had floating around in my subconscious. The character created reminds people a lot of the character of Beloved in the book of the same name. I had just read it a few months before. Bubble bubble, boil and you got trouble!

 

[butters]

so we're more or less in agreement. cool beans

i wonder what the others will conclude when they give it some consideration. still, no doubt other minds have thought all this stuff many many times before and others will find themselves wondering about it in the future. still, we can only live our own lives.

 

[vrosej10]

I should add that the writing program i am in considers walking an essential part of writing and actually tells us to include it as part of our daily practice (45 mins a day; this is how i managed to end up posting on Lit).

 

[Esperanza_Hidalgo]

so we're more or less in agreement. cool beans

It happens at anytime during contemplative moments when sight, texture, smell or (insert here) inspires (pen and paper always at the ready)--

but the best,
the ripest,
the sweetest,
the most needy,
happens when . . .

saturday or sunday
seven hours of sleep
thirty minutes after waking
she's asleep
I'm ripe
and a cycle is near (TMI).

At these moments--
rare in occurrence--
poetry sings
in this woman.

 

[butters]

It happens at anytime during contemplative moments when sight, texture, smell or (insert here) inspires (pen and paper always at the ready)--

but the best,
the ripest,
the sweetest,
the most needy,
happens when . . .

saturday or sunday
seven hours of sleep
thirty minutes after waking
she's asleep
I'm ripe
and a cycle is near (TMI).

At these moments--
rare in occurrence--
poetry sings
in this woman.

those quiet, stolen moments can produce the finest works, espie

but the thing i'm trying to get at here, is more about rhythm/tonal qualities: v and i seem to agree that the physicality of walking, maybe its repetitious beat, can free other parts of your mind whilst occupying the less creative... but what i am digging for is for how many others does that pattern of sound repetitive footsteps/car engines produce help form a write? how closely does what we might create during these times relate to the sounds/rhythms produced....

it was because of Liar's thread, the responses there, that it occurred to me how lots of the stuff i produce that way (not the inspiration or words, exactly) conform to the patterns of my walking. so, fairly measured beats, even down to stressed or unstressed... a bit like fitting a poem to the tune of a song you are familiar with. i was wondering about the tonal qualities car engines possess - do they influence the tonal qualities of any given line, inflections in a phrase ... or maybe the kind of 'white noise' a car can produce, maybe that works the same way as the reps of walking, tunes one part of your brain out and allows another to come to the fore.

just thinking aloud and hoping for replies

 

[bflagsst]

I used to only write with music on. That trend is what lead me to believe there may be an inexorable difference between prose and poetry. Head-writing and never writing on paper, but performing that work from head by way of mouth, resembles the purest form of poetry to me.

 

[UnderYourSpell]

As I mentioned on some other thread I need peace and quiet to write, so as I'm never alone in the car there's not much chance there ...... plus I am very prone to falling asleep when a passenger in a car! Years ago in my last marriage I used to 'head write' every day as I walked all my dogs for miles, then had to keep repeating it to remember it until it dawned on me to take pen and paper with me. My best stuff comes last thing at night manys the time I've written 'wonderful' stuff just as I'm falling asleep and it's gone in the morning. Eve told me to have a pad and pen beside the bed but can you imagine the scene? fumbling for my glasses/ fumbling for the light/ rustle of paper/ scratch of scribbling pen/ one very disgruntled husband every night!

 

[Esperanza_Hidalgo]

... or maybe the kind of 'white noise' a car can produce, maybe that works the same way as the reps of walking, tunes one part of your brain out and allows another to come to the fore.

just thinking aloud and hoping for replies

I can't speak of others, but poetry occurs tapping deeply within me--nothing interfering--white noise is dearth because all I think about is white noise. But that might be a product of neuron pop--ADHD. Brains function differently with all--mine pops with too much to write if not in deep concentration.

Partner listens to music while studying. I listen to music, turn it off, and then write--so it inspires, but can't interfere during creation or I get beans .

It gets me to the place, but interferes once I am in the place.

So, that is a partial answer as to the effect of white noise, and direct noise as in music, on one gal. Hope I got to point now.

BTW--Good thinking out loud.

 

[twelveoone]

those quiet, stolen moments can produce the finest works, espie

but the thing i'm trying to get at here, is more about rhythm/tonal qualities: v and i seem to agree that the physicality of walking, maybe its repetitious beat, can free other parts of your mind whilst occupying the less creative... but what i am digging for is for how many others does that pattern of sound repetitive footsteps/car engines produce help form a write? how closely does what we might create during these times relate to the sounds/rhythms produced....

it was because of Liar's thread, the responses there, that it occurred to me how lots of the stuff i produce that way (not the inspiration or words, exactly) conform to the patterns of my walking. so, fairly measured beats, even down to stressed or unstressed... a bit like fitting a poem to the tune of a song you are familiar with. i was wondering about the tonal qualities car engines possess - do they influence the tonal qualities of any given line, inflections in a phrase ... or maybe the kind of 'white noise' a car can produce, maybe that works the same way as the reps of walking, tunes one part of your brain out and allows another to come to the fore.

just thinking aloud and hoping for replies

ah, the feet, the feet....
there have been experiments, with two pure tones around 300hz, where people hear voices, some to the extent of being able to transcribe what was said...
Welcome my son, welcome to the machine.
What did you dream?
It's alright we told you what to dream...
Pink Floyd

 

[butters]

ah, the feet, the feet....
there have been experiments, with two pure tones around 300hz, where people hear voices, some to the extent of being able to transcribe what was said...
Welcome my son, welcome to the machine.
What did you dream?
It's alright we told you what to dream...
Pink Floyd

ah, i am most familiar with PF, and that particular track...

the hearing voices thing, now that's very interesting. do you have any links, 12oh?

 

[twelveoone]

ah, i am most familiar with PF, and that particular track...

the hearing voices thing, now that's very interesting. do you have any links, 12oh?

Pinker mentioned it in a book, I remember reading about it years ago.
I should look, scary thing it can be done with microwaves for putting "thoughts" in people's heads. True. But in that case, it is rather complicated, instrumentation and direction, so if the gov. wants to suppress you, much easier to call you in for a tax audit.
so.......the next time you go through a full body scanner and you have good thoughts about the party in power

just kidding...they would sell it to a corporation....the next time you go through a full body scanner and you have an extreme desire for a Coke.

 

[Angeline]

For years I had the most horrible commute to work. Never less than 45 minutes one way and it was always a challenge to find the roads less travelled. I'd get off the superhighway as soon as possible and go out of my way to drive through the country and on older or neighborhood roads. It made the commute almost pleasant and I composed in my head a lot while driving.

Now I sit out on my back deck and stare at the mountains and compose but you are right it is not quite the same. There's something about those lulling tires spinning on the roadway that give you a kind of music against which to build a poem. Really.

I'd drive around again just for the poetic inspiration if gasoline weren't so friggin expensive.

 

[twelveoone]

ah, i am most familiar with PF, and that particular track...

the hearing voices thing, now that's very interesting. do you have any links, 12oh?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinewave_synthesis

This link mentions the three who worked on it. At this point it is recognizable as speech.
Pinker in the Language Instinct, p.154 mentions an early experiment (paper in 1971)that had three sweeping tones, that they told subjects was a flawed speech synthesizer. About a quarter could write the "sentence" down. There was no sentence.
Faulty memory on my part, I said, two tones. I was confusing it with how the myna bird mimics speech. Or perhaps remembering other later papers, concerning speech synthesis.
On page 155, he states All speech is an illusion, in this he is talking about word boundaries, in short even we listen to a foreign language, we can not distinguish where the words end, it seems seamless.
The future of poetry, meaningless buzzes and beats. Strict of course, organized around poetic elements like Xenon.
You hear, har,har, what you to hear, har, har, here.

 

[butters]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinewave_synthesis

This link mentions the three who worked on it. At this point it is recognizable as speech.
Pinker in the Language Instinct, p.154 mentions an early experiment (paper in 1971)that had three sweeping tones, that they told subjects was a flawed speech synthesizer. About a quarter could write the "sentence" down. There was no sentence.
Faulty memory on my part, I said, two tones. I was confusing it with how the myna bird mimics speech. Or perhaps remembering other later papers, concerning speech synthesis.
On page 155, he states All speech is an illusion, in this he is talking about word boundaries, in short even we listen to a foreign language, we can not distinguish where the words end, it seems seamless.
The future of poetry, meaningless buzzes and beats. Strict of course, organized around poetic elements like Xenon.
You hear, har,har, what you to hear, har, har, here.

wow! this is such a great sentence:

This work paved the way for a view of speech as a dynamic pattern of trajectories through articulatory-acoustic space.

it makes my mouth do 'things' as i speak it - it embodies acoustic trajectories (in my head it does, anyway)

thanks for posting this link, 12OH1 - i'll take time tomorrow to read it beyond where my eyes and brain will permit me tonight

all speech is an illusion



that's a first liner to a poem i need to write. definitely.

 

[twelveoone]

this is spurred by Liar's 'recession' thread but it just occurred to me and so i'm dropping it here.


i wonder if those of you composing in your cars are affected by the sounds of your engines ... the notes it produces at various speeds over differing road surfaces, the tones it produces at idle or when moving up through the gears ... tonal qualities, rhythms the engine produces or the road surfaces create... wordless music that you then begin to compose to without wondering why that happens

what do you think? is this the case for you people?

the bottles clinking
the inane chatter
the sirens wailing
the sound of breaking glass

the high pitched twitter
of women whining
a smack upon a well rounded ass
a gun shot close by

who needs nature? cars? take the subway and go in a bar. or tube to the pub. whatever.

 

[butters]

i hit edit instead of quote - then wondered what happened to my reply i'm tired. bed time



i don't need cars. i don't need trains, or planes. the music of a night-time bar, its wild cacophony, would distract me but maybe not others more fond of that type of night music... words

distract me

but the voices of nature
no man-voices
they soothe and allow me space for composition. it's too rare, though. starved of people-free time, my mind gets very clutter-tight, begins to hold its virtual breath ...

 

[UnderYourSpell]

Sad person that I am, I play at farms on Facebook and as I wait for someone to chop the trees and plow the fields. I write!

 

[EroticOrogeny]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinewave_synthesis

This link mentions the three who worked on it. At this point it is recognizable as speech.
Pinker in the Language Instinct, p.154 mentions an early experiment (paper in 1971)that had three sweeping tones, that they told subjects was a flawed speech synthesizer. About a quarter could write the "sentence" down. There was no sentence.
Faulty memory on my part, I said, two tones. I was confusing it with how the myna bird mimics speech. Or perhaps remembering other later papers, concerning speech synthesis.
On page 155, he states All speech is an illusion, in this he is talking about word boundaries, in short even we listen to a foreign language, we can not distinguish where the words end, it seems seamless.
The future of poetry, meaningless buzzes and beats. Strict of course, organized around poetic elements like Xenon.
You hear, har,har, what you to hear, har, har, here.

I've never looked at it from that point of view.
More used to Fourier analysis as a means to decompose acoustic and other signals.

 

[vrosej10]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinewave_synthesis

This link mentions the three who worked on it. At this point it is recognizable as speech.
Pinker in the Language Instinct, p.154 mentions an early experiment (paper in 1971)that had three sweeping tones, that they told subjects was a flawed speech synthesizer. About a quarter could write the "sentence" down. There was no sentence.
Faulty memory on my part, I said, two tones. I was confusing it with how the myna bird mimics speech. Or perhaps remembering other later papers, concerning speech synthesis.
On page 155, he states All speech is an illusion, in this he is talking about word boundaries, in short even we listen to a foreign language, we can not distinguish where the words end, it seems seamless.
The future of poetry, meaningless buzzes and beats. Strict of course, organized around poetic elements like Xenon.
You hear, har,har, what you to hear, har, har, here.

I believe in the language instinct having raised someone who seems to have been born without it; it's often easier to recognise things in their absense. We are tuned to try and make words out of random sounds.

 

[Kaishaku]

For years I had the most horrible commute to work. Never less than 45 minutes one way and it was always a challenge to find the roads less travelled. I'd get off the superhighway as soon as possible and go out of my way to drive through the country and on older or neighborhood roads. It made the commute almost pleasant and I composed in my head a lot while driving.

Now I sit out on my back deck and stare at the mountains and compose but you are right it is not quite the same. There's something about those lulling tires spinning on the roadway that give you a kind of music against which to build a poem. Really.

I'd drive around again just for the poetic inspiration if gasoline weren't so friggin expensive.

I've always had a long commute... mostly on freeway. I used to carry a small notebook in my pocket to jot down ideas, except at 70 mph in traffic it's not always the best way to compose. Often I couldn't read what I wrote. I switched over to a voice recorder which helps a lot. I also use it for my audio poetry and prose submissions.

I have gotten out of the habit of carrying it... actually my I phone will record also, just got to try to use it again.


K.

 

[twelveoone]

I've never looked at it from that point of view.
More used to Fourier analysis as a means to decompose acoustic and other signals.

analysis of signals

if you want you can build your own poetry analysis machine,
Beat-90
poem is about looking at a tree
God-zzzzzzt
God does not make trees
Dirt does
No Dirt in poem
FAIL