Feels a bit silly to say, as the Planet of the Apes story is so stark and literal, but I had a strange experience with writing that I still think about. When I was little, I mimicked my favorite author at the time and used her character’s name in my stories, only changing their surnames. I loved one character’s name because it traditionally seen as a “boy’s” name and it felt unique. Years later: I have my first romantic relationship with a boy who had the same first name as that character. It fizzles but was definitely impactful on me. One day I mindlessly read through my childhood stories and see that, years ago, before I even lived in the same state as this guy, the character I wrote had the exact same name as him, first and last. I hadn’t remembered this detail at all. Very random but still insanely coincidental. I remember the exact moment when I realized, how strange reality felt then. What pieces of us following us through life, our work, that we carry with us without even realizing?
Laura, is this also an example of apophenia or patternicity - basically the human behaviour of finding meanings in patterns? I think we’re all wired with this ability otherwise we’d be unable to think up stories, write poetry, draw pictures, etc. To put it bluntly it gives us an evolutionary advantage to predetermine our futures. And our 16 month old toddler would certainly agree with this judging by their tantrums!
Re. "Does composing fiction assign us a reality?" My friend Dylan made a graphic novel about whether we bear responsibility for what we create: Sam Zabel and the Magic Pen. It's very good. https://hicksvillecomics.com/sam-zabel-and-the-magic-pen
The older I get, the more I write to pull myself apart and put the pieces back together how I want them. Like a jigsaw puzzle that gets smaller as you figure it out until only the best bits remain. Great read!
Laura I am enjoying these weekly offerings. I really want you to read my substack - David.brazier@substack.com - find out how a Berkshire boy went on to encounter spiritual teachers, poets, mystics, Princes and Kings, join a fourth way school, embrace the Gurdjieff teaching learn to meditate and attend sweat lodges, become Headmaster of a school with Advita Vedanta at his heart and that’s just the start. I think you went to Leighton Park!
Loved reading this refreshing perspective. I wrote about my connection to your music & my baby. I can’t copy and paste the link here but you can find it in my profile. It’s called 3am thinking… :)
I have been doing the same thing with songwriting for a while now. Being very careful about what things I choose to write about, trying to lean into love and a kind of open positivity without it sounding too trite or twee, it's harder but it feels like it does help infuse my real life with more of the same.
I had a horrible experience with a man a little over a year ago and I so desperately wanted to write a song about it, as a way of getting it out or exorcising it. I also knew it would be a very powerful song but I was still very angry had a terrible feeling if I did so it would some how magnify or refract the energy of it and it would end up hanging around longer.
A year later I ended up writing a poem about it and a visitation from the Mexican goddess of dirt and sin Tlazōlteōtl (which is on my Substack should anyone wanna take a gander :P), it is more veiled as to what exactly happened and I think somehow more powerful. I feel glad I waited for the anger to subside before writing about it, it led to a poem, wilder, stranger and more miraculous than I could have imagined... as opposed to my initial desire to write it as an angry narrative song.
I think it was Tori Amos who said songwriting can be catharsis but it's not healing.
Oh I loved all of this, and it reminds me of an odd thing. In winter 2018 I was doing a creative writing MA and found myself writing a science fiction short story (which I'd never done before) in which a sudden lockdown was enforced by the govt. The story followed the psychodrama of the inhabitants of a flat and how they coped with the first 24 hrs of this lockdown. I'd never thought about 'lockdown' as a concept before and didn't know where the story came from, but I based the flat specifically on the flat my boyfriend lived in at the time, which had a wide window looking out onto a valley. This setting contrasted with the claustrophobia of an enforced lockdown without end, which was what interested me. Almost exactly two years later I was living in that flat, staring out of that window, as the UK govt enforced a lockdown. It was so weird - I didn't feel a causative relationship between what I'd written and the claustrophobia I was now experiencing, but there was this odd echoing sensation like I was experiencing it for the second time, and it felt all the stranger for the fact that the short story had really announced itself to me, out of nowhere, and was stylistically incongruent with what I usually wrote. Odd coincidence, weird vision, accidental spell - not sure.
It's very worth listening to Grant Morrison speak about his experience writing The Invisibles, and the incredibly strong correspondences between the fiction and what unfolded in his life - especially with his contextual knowledge of magic, and working with sigils. He called it a hypersigil. He's great value! Likewise, i think Jodorowsky's psychomagic makes use of the same channel of story and play between the inner and the outer - but consciously, and perhaps reversed.
I have been reflecting on this all week. I also went and downloaded the book you mention being a big comic book fan since a child and also being familiar with Alan Moore and Grant Morrison work and philosophies. You are right about the Death Card, Death an ever constant, and ego death is a sublime experience in any esoteric system or pattern of development. William Blake keeps telling us to expand, expand and that is what we are invited to do.
Feels a bit silly to say, as the Planet of the Apes story is so stark and literal, but I had a strange experience with writing that I still think about. When I was little, I mimicked my favorite author at the time and used her character’s name in my stories, only changing their surnames. I loved one character’s name because it traditionally seen as a “boy’s” name and it felt unique. Years later: I have my first romantic relationship with a boy who had the same first name as that character. It fizzles but was definitely impactful on me. One day I mindlessly read through my childhood stories and see that, years ago, before I even lived in the same state as this guy, the character I wrote had the exact same name as him, first and last. I hadn’t remembered this detail at all. Very random but still insanely coincidental. I remember the exact moment when I realized, how strange reality felt then. What pieces of us following us through life, our work, that we carry with us without even realizing?
Laura, is this also an example of apophenia or patternicity - basically the human behaviour of finding meanings in patterns? I think we’re all wired with this ability otherwise we’d be unable to think up stories, write poetry, draw pictures, etc. To put it bluntly it gives us an evolutionary advantage to predetermine our futures. And our 16 month old toddler would certainly agree with this judging by their tantrums!
Re. "Does composing fiction assign us a reality?" My friend Dylan made a graphic novel about whether we bear responsibility for what we create: Sam Zabel and the Magic Pen. It's very good. https://hicksvillecomics.com/sam-zabel-and-the-magic-pen
Have ordered a copy - so interesting that this a theme in comics particularly!
The older I get, the more I write to pull myself apart and put the pieces back together how I want them. Like a jigsaw puzzle that gets smaller as you figure it out until only the best bits remain. Great read!
Laura I am enjoying these weekly offerings. I really want you to read my substack - David.brazier@substack.com - find out how a Berkshire boy went on to encounter spiritual teachers, poets, mystics, Princes and Kings, join a fourth way school, embrace the Gurdjieff teaching learn to meditate and attend sweat lodges, become Headmaster of a school with Advita Vedanta at his heart and that’s just the start. I think you went to Leighton Park!
Loved reading this refreshing perspective. I wrote about my connection to your music & my baby. I can’t copy and paste the link here but you can find it in my profile. It’s called 3am thinking… :)
I have been doing the same thing with songwriting for a while now. Being very careful about what things I choose to write about, trying to lean into love and a kind of open positivity without it sounding too trite or twee, it's harder but it feels like it does help infuse my real life with more of the same.
I had a horrible experience with a man a little over a year ago and I so desperately wanted to write a song about it, as a way of getting it out or exorcising it. I also knew it would be a very powerful song but I was still very angry had a terrible feeling if I did so it would some how magnify or refract the energy of it and it would end up hanging around longer.
A year later I ended up writing a poem about it and a visitation from the Mexican goddess of dirt and sin Tlazōlteōtl (which is on my Substack should anyone wanna take a gander :P), it is more veiled as to what exactly happened and I think somehow more powerful. I feel glad I waited for the anger to subside before writing about it, it led to a poem, wilder, stranger and more miraculous than I could have imagined... as opposed to my initial desire to write it as an angry narrative song.
I think it was Tori Amos who said songwriting can be catharsis but it's not healing.
I wonder about that a lot...
Oh I loved all of this, and it reminds me of an odd thing. In winter 2018 I was doing a creative writing MA and found myself writing a science fiction short story (which I'd never done before) in which a sudden lockdown was enforced by the govt. The story followed the psychodrama of the inhabitants of a flat and how they coped with the first 24 hrs of this lockdown. I'd never thought about 'lockdown' as a concept before and didn't know where the story came from, but I based the flat specifically on the flat my boyfriend lived in at the time, which had a wide window looking out onto a valley. This setting contrasted with the claustrophobia of an enforced lockdown without end, which was what interested me. Almost exactly two years later I was living in that flat, staring out of that window, as the UK govt enforced a lockdown. It was so weird - I didn't feel a causative relationship between what I'd written and the claustrophobia I was now experiencing, but there was this odd echoing sensation like I was experiencing it for the second time, and it felt all the stranger for the fact that the short story had really announced itself to me, out of nowhere, and was stylistically incongruent with what I usually wrote. Odd coincidence, weird vision, accidental spell - not sure.
It's very worth listening to Grant Morrison speak about his experience writing The Invisibles, and the incredibly strong correspondences between the fiction and what unfolded in his life - especially with his contextual knowledge of magic, and working with sigils. He called it a hypersigil. He's great value! Likewise, i think Jodorowsky's psychomagic makes use of the same channel of story and play between the inner and the outer - but consciously, and perhaps reversed.
Interesting. I wonder what it is about the comic book set - jodorowsky included.
I have been reflecting on this all week. I also went and downloaded the book you mention being a big comic book fan since a child and also being familiar with Alan Moore and Grant Morrison work and philosophies. You are right about the Death Card, Death an ever constant, and ego death is a sublime experience in any esoteric system or pattern of development. William Blake keeps telling us to expand, expand and that is what we are invited to do.
Fascinating.
Was it Terence McKenna who said that cultures who have no indigenous psychedelic plants tend to access transformation through bodily ordeal?
Love that
Maybe that's why people call it the "terrible twos", because there is an element of terror to it?
Oooo