So I decided to give it a go, and I got some rather interesting results, which I shall post below (all unchanged besides some minor spelling and grammar corrections.). I’ve found this an incredibly fun way of writing, and I’d thought I’d post about it here.Automatic writing is the most direct of Surrealist techniques.
Sit at a table with pen and paper; put yourself in a 'receptive' frame of mind, and start writing. Continue writing without thinking of what is appearing beneath your pen. Write as fast as you can. If, for some reason, the flow stops, leave a space and immediately begin again by writing down the first letter of the next sentence. Choose this letter at random before you begin, for instance, a 't', and always begin this new sentence with a 't'.
Although in the purest version of automatism nothing is 'corrected' or re-written the unexpected material produced by this method can be used as the basis for further composition. What is crucial is the un-preditated free-association that creates the basic text.
It is this production of 'unexpected material' that serves itself as much as it serves as a basis for further 'Surrealistic' manipulation and interpretation, in the realm of the literary, the graphic, the erotic, the expulsatory.
Automatic writing is writing directed by the unconscious mind. It is sometimes called "trance" writing because it is done quickly and without judgment, writing whatever comes to mind, "without consciousness," as if in a trance. It is believed that this allows one to tap into the subconscious mind where "the true self" dwells. Uninhibited by the conscious mind, deep and mystical thoughts can be accessed.
Surrealist Games (Alastair Brotchie, Redstone Press)
Sit down, clear your mind, and let your hand write, then post the results here. Go ooooooon, you’ve got five minutes.
I'm surprised at how coherent it came out actually.Nick the Stripper's Automatic Writing wrote:There was a time, if I may say so, when a kid could walk down the street and sigh without worrying about having Ritalin thrown at him by an insane man in a white coat, carrying a large bucket full of the s**t. Nowadays you can’t even sweat without them putting you on something.
Step right up! Step right up! Come have a quick fix from your legal drug dealers, funded by the government. Let us kill you slow.
I am, and will always be, a misogynist. This a man cannot help for he cannot control his emotions. This is to say I do not believe woman is below men, on the contrary, I simply believe woman is different to man. I cannot help my feelings of animosity and mistrust towards the pussy.
I was standing on a ledge when god told me personally that he does not exist. And then the tigers on the shower curtain pattern came to life and attacked me. I had to burn the bugger in the garden. Imagine me: a naked man burning a shower curtain in his garden out of fear.
And so his head exploded, but I shall not say which one. There he was, young hipster walking down the street. Running, actually, from the law he spot drinking milk in a bar. (Cops always drink milk in bars, can’t drink alcohol on the job, that’s how you spot them.) And there I was, looking in the mirror at Occam’s Razor - which I had used to cut the cocaine - and it all made sense, in an absurd kind of way absurdity is absurd and absurd is absurd is absurd we’re absurd.
So, I pounded the kitty’s ass and gave it a fag to drag on, then I asked it what it wanted most in the world, and it said to pound a cop, the perv. I love laid on the carpet and read sports weekly, Morrissey was on the cover jacket licking his nipple’s band aid for the starving children of Africa, bless his attention seeking heart.
Yes, I can see, but I’ve got nothing to say of interest, so instead let us read the television magazine. Eastenders is on tonight. That Sonia got downs syndrome, I swear, I swear it’s true! Nuh-uh! Uh-huh! Get out of town!
You got anything to say? You can start a conversation. I love football, me, but I hate those comic fans reading their comics and dressing up like their comic heroes. Come here and paint my face like the flag of the football team I idolise so I can go get drunk and smack some Italians. Whey!
A pig is a pig pretending to be a pig pretending to be a cat who is secretly a nark dressed up like a dog eating a man’s slug that lay dead in salt. I saw the man read from his bible and pour salt on the floor, only to crawl through it, for some strange ritual, and shrivel up like a slug. Religion will do that to ya, well, not your body, but your mind. It will shrivel it up, up, up!
‘Logic is dead!’ screamed Jesus joyously roaming through the streets and s**t on the Pagans and Mohicans. ‘Take that, heathen’ he would yell, kicking them with justified anger (for any other anger is a sin). “Hypocrite! s**t eater! Molester of children’s minds� screamed Buddha, riding on the back of Allen Ginsberg.
‘I think it’d be fun to ride off on a horse in the sunset.’ ‘no it wouldn’t, you daft git, cause it’d be nothing like the films, you wouldn’t see it as a long shot, duh!’
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