Automatic Writing (Unconscious poetry part 2)

[dr_mabeuse]

A big part of the Dada movement in Paris involved automatic writing. Automatic writing is where the author goes into a trance and either writes whatever comes into his head or dictates to someone else who can write it down. A lot of dada lit and later surrealist lit was arrived at this way.

I was surprised to find this out, because automtic writing was first the provenance of spiritualists, and, I think, has now returned there, if it exists anywhere at all. But the Dadaists were very successful with it

I've tried this, but with pretty poor results. My handwriting is awful, and I don't know if you can do this on a keyboard. I can't at any rate.

Has anyone else ever tried automatic writing? How'd you do it?


---dr.M.

 

[Angeline]

Has anyone else ever tried automatic writing? How'd you do it?

Tried it. Nuttin' happened. (Well, maybe a few scribbles but nothing intelligible.)

 

[OT]

of similar ilk is the school of thought that encourages you to write every day -- even when you can't think of anything to write. Filling the page with nonsense will at some point encourage the muse to come out and play.

The engineer in me requires a bit more structure and purpose to my writing sessions. I've tried various forms of free-flow writing and am convinced that my random thoughts are best left to gel (harmlessly) inside my head. When they have organized themselves and can behave in a coherent manner; I allow then out.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

of similar ilk is the school of thought that encourages you to write every day -- even when you can't think of anything to write. Filling the page with nonsense will at some point encourage the muse to come out and play.

I've tried it too, and it's not as easy and/or silly as it sounds at all. It didn't work for me. I kept on repeating the same words over and over again and so I quit. A friend of mine had some success with it

I really wonder though, if you kept at this long enough, what would come out? Apparently some people are good at this.

What's really amazing is how your mind insists on making sense of things. We're all prisoners of sense. We just can't stop making sense of things. I think that's why we have to dream. Dreams are where sense doesn't work. It's our playground.

As a demonstration of how we insist on making sense of everything, try and put two words together such that the result is meaningless. What you usually get is a two word poem or image. Even with three words chosen at random, our mind insists on making sense of them, as best it can. Up past 3 words, it's easier to admit one is dealing with nonsense.

It's a reasonably cool exercise, I think.

---dr.M.

 

[Guest]

Just some trivia: Yeats and his wife George tried it too, too often if you ask me, which of course no one should. The Yeatses were introduced to it by Madame Blavatska who wasted too much of the poet's time (if you ask me).

Perdita the too bluntly outspoken at times

 

[Angeline]

Just some trivia: Yeats and his wife George tried it too, too often if you ask me, which of course no one should. The Yeatses were introduced to it by Madame Blavatska who wasted too much of the poet's time (if you ask me).

Perdita the too bluntly outspoken at times

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

--From Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - 1601 - Act I. - Scene 5. - Rows: 166-167

~A

 

[Guest]

Angelmine:

Slapped upside the head by Sh're. Owie.

penitant Perdita

 

[Angeline]

Angelmine:
Slapped upside the head by Sh're. Owie.

penitant Perdita

LOL. Don't be too penitant--you know as well as I that for every bard quote there's an equal and opposite counter. You were just too nice too find one and post it.



P.S. Did I see you floating by in the Macy's T-day parade?

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Most of the efforts at automatic writing seem to be more or less crap, but some of it was quite startling and origina. I'm talking now about the experiements ths dadaists did in Paris after WWI. In fact, the whole idea of surrealism takes its central thesis from Freud and from the efforts of these artists to bring the unconsious dream world into waking life. The feeling was that science and rationality had produced nothing but the horrors of WWI, so it was time to trust in the unconscious dreaming mind as a way of getting us out of the predicament we're in. The feeling is the same as in David Byrne's album title "Stop Making Sense!" Still good advice, if you ask me.

I tried automatic writing a few times when I was in college, and I could never get it to work. This is a case where you really have to be able to write fast and legibly and without thinking about it, all impossible for me. Though I could never do it, I did have a friend who could put himself into a kind of hypnotic trance and and just start talking-- very dreamlike, very startling images, kind of scary too--and I'd try and take down what he said. The cool thing is that he might well have been faking, but it didn't really matter. The originality was still there.

The two things I reemember him saying in one session were about a place called "Hippleby Square" and the concept of the mega-middleclass. Neither of us reralized the pun in Hippleby Square at the time. I love when that happens. I love the concept that even while we're thinking about something else, something inside us is just churning this stuff out, like matter spewing out of a white hole.

---dr.M.

 

[Angeline]

Boy am I gonna take hits for this

The feeling is the same as in David Byrne's album title "Stop Making Sense!" Still good advice, if you ask me.

Excellent advice, indeed! David Byrne is a very smart and interesting man, IMHO. (Ever see True Stories? I love that flick.)

I agree that lack of success with automatic writing may be largely due to physical constraints. I'm a southpaw and have awful handwriting with my writing hand (which is why I so love my keyboard). If I write with my right hand, it's a completely illegible scrawl.

I think though that what is successfully produced by automatic writing may be similar to what some people can do with Ouija boards. (Ok, everyone put down the rotten eggs and tomatoes ; I know some people have strong objections to this for various reasons.)

When I was a teenaged Angeline, a friend and I used to *consult* the Ouija board, as I'm sure many of you did. Now I know damn well that I was not consciously pushing that thing and I don't think my friend was, either. What came out though, and it came out in droves of words the moment we started--every time--was the most amazing, literate philiosophical discourse about life and soul, etc. I am NOT making this up! I am (and was then, too) a literate girl as is my friend, and I'm willing to believe what we saw was either a single or joint outpouring of subconscious meandering--like a dream, maybe. Who knows though what it really was or where it came from--I like to be open-minded about these things. I'm just sorry we never recorded it because it was truely book-worthy. And, btw, there were no uh "evil spirits" involved!

Anyone else have these experiences or other, similar ones? What happened? How do you define it, if you've tried to do so? (Hope you don't mind, doc--it's extrapolation, not thread hijacking, I think!)

 

[dr_mabeuse]

I don't mind being hi-jacked a bit. I'm a crypto-ouijolist myself. I've always been fascinated by ouji boards. I really don't give a damn how they work, and I think the question of whether they really "tell the future" or not is both goofy and totally irrelevent. The fact is, something comes out. That's what makes them magical.

I'm doing a lot with tarot cards lately. It's the same thing with them. I don't care about their predictive capabilities. (Well, that's what I say. It's embarrassing how many time I go to the deck with a question in mind and just give the cards a casual cut to see what comes up. It's even more embarrassing to realize how the results can really affect my mood.) The images and meanings are ridiculously profound and resonant, and you get to the point where you just turn them over one by one and watch a story unfold, almost like reading a book in which you, the cards, and your subconcious are all co-authors.

The hanged man. Fear death by drowning.


---dr.M.

 

[Angeline]

I think the question of whether they really "tell the future" or not is both goofy and totally irrelevent. The fact is, something comes out. That's what makes them magical.

Doc, a toast to you! I have been saying this for years about stuff like Ouija, tarot, I Ching (my personal favorite form of inner exploration--well besides writing poems, I guess, lol), etc. The point is not how or even why! The point, well to me, is the message and what it means to the person who gets it. The other stuff is, in my opinion, digression.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Doc, a toast to you! I have been saying this for years about stuff like Ouija, tarot, I Ching (my personal favorite form of inner exploration--well besides writing poems, I guess, lol), etc. The point is not how or even why! The point, well to me, is the message and what it means to the person who gets it. The other stuff is, in my opinion, digression.

I fooled with I Ching, but those images just never resonanted with me. All those clouds and mountains didn't mean anything; I couldn't internalize them.

I had an anthology of "primitive" poetry (i.e. poetry from non-western cultures) called "Technicians of the Sacred". I always liked that concept: sacred technology. Divinatory tools are sacred technology; they're a way the world to diagnose what's going on between you and the universe.

I personally don't care whether people like them or not, but I hate to see them dismissed on the grounds that "they don't work". It's like dismissing all religious belief and feelings just because God doesn't give you things when you pray for them.

We never talk about the poet as priest anymore. We don't think of poets as going on in to mess it up with life and fighting and clawing to bring out some piece of meaning, and that's too bad. At one time poetry was hard, muscular, vitally important work: wrestling with spirits and making the gods tell you their secrets. Poets were really technicians of the sacred. I don't know when it got so terribly marginalized. Probably when we started thinking science could take care of all that stuff. Science can't. No more than a hammer can paint.

---dr.M.

 

[Angeline]

Poetry is My Religion

At one time poetry was hard, muscular, vitally important work: wrestling with spirits and making the gods tell you their secrets. Poets were really technicians of the sacred. I don't know when it got so terribly marginalized. Probably when we started thinking science could take care of all that stuff. Science can't. No more than a hammer can paint.

Your comment made me remember one of my favorite quotes:

Poetry is the deification of reality.
--Dame Edith Sitwell

I think that is spot on--it is what poetry can be when it's marginalized by neither writer nor reader. The best poems have a transcendent quality about them--you read them and you are transported. Great poets throughout history and from all cultures have understood this and expressed it in their writing. You can see it from the 14th c. Sufi poets like Rumi and Hafiz, to Western writers like Blake and Baudelaire, even Whitman and Ginsberg. And I fail to see how being transported by writing or reading poetry is different from any other religious transformation, whether it's induced by experiences that occur within traditional religious institutions--Western or Eastern--or more unorthodox routes (like say jazz, lol).

But them I'm er a bit radical.

 

[Maria2394]

mystical stuff

Now I do feel at home. I put away my tarot a couple of years ago because they made my mom uncomfortable and now that she is IN or at the great beyond, I guess I can take them out and see what they have been up to. I have never had any luck with my crystal ball. And you wanna hear something freaky?

When I was about 22 I guess, I started having really bizarre dreams. like premonitions and stuff. I dreamt a plane crash that happened the next day and then I dreamt the exact scores to three football games, ( but not in the same night!) My Dad, being the gambler he was, bet on the last two after the first one was accurate and made some money but after that I never got another score in my dreams...I guess thats called using the powers for evil? I also dream lottery numbers, but can never see the state ID on the tickets... LOL... you both are so great! I love to find people that arent afraid to admit that there just might be something else besides us....
till later, Maria