I love the world of ideas

[CharleyH]

I might not necessarily like everything about it, but life in itself is interesting. I can get ideas from surfing the documentary channels, listening in on the conversations of strangers, picking up the newspaper and even reading through some of the threads here on Lit.

At the moment I'm pretty sticky on historical eras, though. I like the contrast between the flamboyant and progressive Weimar Republic, and Berlin ten years later. It always makes me wonder what happened to the lesbians out on the scene. They can't all have been caught and rounded up in concentration camps. How many of them conformed in order to survive, but still had dangerously lapses into their old lifestyles?

I also once read a book called "Sex in History", which described how lesbianism was rampant amongst Roman women, who paid their cobblers to make leather dildos for them. That sent my imagination racing...

I'd like to find out more about life in communist countries during the Cold War. I bet I'd get some interesting characters out of that.

Geez, the possibilities are endless! I love the world of ideas, too!

But what? Is the most exciting idea to you? Right now?

small bump

 

[scheherazade_79]

But what? Is the most exciting idea to you? Right now?

small bump

The world of classical music behind the iron curtain in the 1970s. A virtuoso violinist wanting to escape to her lover in the West. Long, bitter winters, shortages of basic goods, a thriving black market, military processions...

 

[CharleyH]

The world of classical music behind the iron curtain in the 1970s. A virtuoso violinist wanting to escape to her lover in the West. Long, bitter winters, shortages of basic goods, a thriving black market, military processions...

perfect! thank you!

 

[Liar]

Been playing around with alternate reality based of different historical outcomes. One of my favourites is that the mongols didn't come to Vienna and turned back, but conqured Europe in it's entireness. What customs and ideals we could had inherited from such a turn of events. It takes some research and a whole lot of brain gymnastics, but it's kind of fun.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

The idea that the brain isn't the generator of thoughts, but rather a sense organ like the eye that detects thoughts that are already out there in some vast, dharamkaya continuum.

It's an idea taken from Tibetan Buddhism. Individual brains come and go, but that continuum exists forever and contains everything in it: things that are impossible as well as possible, all souls, past and future.

Enlightenment breaks the limits of individual mind and gives access to it all.

That must be nice.

 

[Guest]

Just scanned my idea file...

I've played with the idea of kind of a batman derivative...

A young girl's parents are murdered under suspicious circumstances. She spends her teens and early 20's acquiring the training and tools to investigate her parents demise, and if necessary, punish their murderers. Her sexuality would be one tool in her arsenal she'd willingly use towards her ends.

 

[Liar]

The idea that the brain isn't the generator of thoughts, but rather a sense organ like the eye that detects thoughts that are already out there in some vast, dharamkaya continuum.

This reminded me of something... I saw a documentary about conscious thoughts, that claimed that most of our small desicions in life (Shall I pick up this pen? Shall I scratch my nose? Shall I sit down?) are in fact not your conscious desicions. They are auto pilot instincts and random spine reactions, that our brains then reconstructs a chain of reasoning around after the deed is actually done.

I wonder if I can make a plot bunny out of that....

 

[oggbashan]

At the moment I'm pretty sticky on historical eras, though. I like the contrast between the flamboyant and progressive Weimar Republic, and Berlin ten years later. It always makes me wonder what happened to the lesbians out on the scene. They can't all have been caught and rounded up in concentration camps. How many of them conformed in order to survive, but still had dangerously lapses into their old lifestyles?
...

Any lesbian who was known to be one either pretended or was rounded up. As 'criminals' as opposed to Jews, Gypsies or 'politicals' they might have become trusties in the camps with the power of life and death.

Homosexuality was rampant among the Nazi hierarchy. Ernst Roehm, head of the SA, was hung apparently for using the SA as a recruitment pool for his lovers. Actually he was killed because the SA was an embarrassment to Hitler once he had control of Germany's armed forces.

Og