Automatic writing #1

I have been following the route of grasping, methodical creativity, of sticking to mechanical tricks of creation in order to release the sluices of the generative mind. Part of this has been practicing automatic writing. Typing fluidly and fluently into Evernote as often as I remember to. Publishing these randomly to a mostly unattended blog seems like a slightly bold and intensely contemporary addition to the process. The results, close to nonsensical, sophomoric and derivative, follow.

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The bees are dying. No more beards of bees and we will have to teach children, as they come of age, of merely the birds. What have the birds to teach our young? Twittering and fluttering, flitting and flying. These are the not the cornerstones of our land-based life. No, we must teach our children of institutions, rocks and stones, steel and girders. Teach of the the makers and the made, the sellers and the sold, bringers of great peace and wagers of great war. Oceans were crossed, mountains were climbed. Learn all the names and some of the initials. History books must be torn up and all the proper nouns, state capitals and heads of state rearranged, scrambled, aligned with dates then used as kindling to start fires of imagination. Be like Plato, Alexander and Jefferson. Be like BJ, be like the Bear.

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It is the strangest fascination, to have a sense there is a list of things to read, to watch, to download and peruse, only to satisfy that urge with searching for more items to add. To feel the weight of the unwatched in your Netflix queue, then find yourself browsing further, extending your internal obligations.

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Self help sucks. Triteness and repetition will always bring the creative mind, longing for individuality, down. How do they know there are seven habits of the highly effective? How do they know how effective these people are? Might they not be abusing their kids? Why stop at 42 ways to feel better right now? Why not make yourself endlessly feel better writing the list onwards and onwards, a meta-self-help vortex of ways to feel better right now. Why feel better at all? What's in it for the cynics, progenies of Diogenes?

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To do lists are confusions. Getting on the horse feels more like getting on the cow. Every list another scrawl in a worthless journal of the damned. Is the noise getting to me? The children, needless of education, always shouting; everything is important to them. Numbers on my lists, mocking my lack of motivation. I don't want to get to number 14, I want to crawl away from number 1. The kettle is on, the tea ceremony is unlikely to live up to any sense of meditation or pageantry. I want a cigarette, but a dollar saved is a dollar earned and I need a job. Automatic writing can be pretty grim when your mind is weary. Let's see if the horse can wake me.
As soon as I commenced the list, I noticed on the bathroom floor a hairband, twisted once into a sideways figure 8. I immediately contemplated the infinite. Or rather, I immediately contemplated the contemplation of the infinite and enjoyed a benign and tiny coincident pattern.
People are eager to talk about doing things that make you uncomfortable in order that you might have a more complete, coherent and satisfying life. I sometimes shy away from even the tiniest discomfort. And a restless lonely state pervades. Humans around offer no succor. Is it a desire to coincide or one to connect? These are all real people, but their socialization pushes them away from the different. I am the same, mist of the time, but I seek the opposite; I seek the direct.

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We have to learn to let go. We grip too tightly to our presuppositions, possessions, needs and drives. Identity is a construct that we nest in; every principle we cling to a comforting addition to the nest. Believe in yourself say pundits and posters; have faith in lack of reason. Nihilism is no refuge.

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And here it goes, round and round. The days merge into each other, mimicking more fraudulent behaviour. It's at very least an anachronism, seeing what comes out, like vomit. Please, we cry, please let it be just this. Just this and nothing else. If it is more, then we are bereft, failed and wan. Go to your congressman, plead with him to limit ambition, to take away the pain. Here it comes again, an over-hyped tornado of truth, blazing a trail towards bethlehem, to die. Here it comes again, wanting to be felt as truth, not absolute truth, but a basic human truth, plaintive and embarrassed to be considered. Descartes wanted more, Plato wanted more - it's okay, kids, calm down, be still. It's all good, as they used to say. How can a phrase so well-meaning become passe so quickly? I write as I breathe, in short bursts, with the only purpose being to stay alive.

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I do love the way the words come, flowing out, grabbing the sediment of half-remembered references with them. Staccato samples of speech, movies, comic books, blending with the infinite and the ether, spewing themselves into arbitrary yet expressive shapes. I love the way they come, oodles, bundles, bushels of words, weaving and warping, subtle and unbidden.