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Automatic Writing

Posted: 10 Jun 2006, 01:37
by nick the stripper
I was browsing the website Language is a Virus for information on the cut-up method of Brion Gysinwhen I found an article on something called Automatic Writing, which said the following:
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)
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.

Sit down, clear your mind, and let your hand write, then post the results here. Go ooooooon, you’ve got five minutes. :wink:
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!’
I'm surprised at how coherent it came out actually.

Posted: 10 Jun 2006, 01:50
by aims
I tried this a month or so back and never got anywhere, since I required a "seed" concept to work from. Oh well, it's worth a second attempt.

Posted: 10 Jun 2006, 05:25
by Big Si
Hasn't Bowie been doing that for the last 10 yrs?

I understand that he loaded the lyrics to every song he'd ever written into the program, and out came loads of new lyrics :D

Posted: 10 Jun 2006, 05:56
by nick the stripper
Big Si wrote:Hasn't Bowie been doing that for the last 10 yrs?

I understand that he loaded the lyrics to every song he'd ever written into the program, and out came loads of new lyrics :D
I don’t know about Automatic Writing, but Brion Gyson came up with the cut-up method, and then William S. Burroughs used it for his Nova Trilogy, influencing Genesis P-Orridge and David Bowie, who both used the cut-up techniques in their work; Genesis more extensively than Bowie.

I’ve got footage on videotape of Bowie being interviewed about cut-ups back in his cocaine days, while sitting cross-legged on a table with a pair of scissors, surrounded by cut-up newspapers he’s rearranging.

Posted: 10 Jun 2006, 06:05
by 9while9
nick the stripper wrote:
Big Si wrote:Hasn't Bowie been doing that for the last 10 yrs?

I understand that he loaded the lyrics to every song he'd ever written into the program, and out came loads of new lyrics :D
I don’t know about Automatic Writing, but Brion Gyson came up with the cut-up method, and then William S. Burroughs used it for his Nova Trilogy and to develop his pseudo-science of language as a virus, influencing Genesis P-Orridge and David Bowie, who both used the cut-up techniques in their work; Genesis more extensively than Bowie.

I’ve got footage on videotape of Bowie being interviewed while using the cut-up method during his cocaine days, he’s sitting cross-legged on a table with a pair of scissors, surrounded but cut-up newspapers he’s rearranging.
Go to sleep Nick...you can automatic write tomorrow.

<Oh yeah likey me avatar
look at meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.. :lol: :lol: :lol:

Posted: 10 Jun 2006, 06:07
by nick the stripper
9while9 wrote:Go to sleep Nick...you can automatic write tomorrow.

<Oh yeah likey me avatar
look at meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.. :lol: :lol: :lol:
I would go to sleep if it was a possibility and it is tomorrow.

Your avatar moves too fast and that’s pissing me off - every time I try and read what it says it changes back to the ‘head and star’ logo. Slow it down, ya nancy troll.

Posted: 10 Jun 2006, 06:20
by 9while9
nick the stripper wrote:
9while9 wrote:Go to sleep Nick...you can automatic write tomorrow.

<Oh yeah likey me avatar
look at meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.. :lol: :lol: :lol:
I would go to sleep if it was a possibility and it is tomorrow.

Your avatar moves too fast and that’s pissing me off - every time I try and read what it says it changes back to the ‘head and star’ logo. Slow it down, ya nancy troll.

It's designed to F wif ya.............. :lol:

Posted: 10 Jun 2006, 06:34
by nick the stripper
9while9 wrote: F wif ya
Written in the blood of digital oompa loompas - you sick Indian-Irish bastard.

Now get outta here and stop derailing ma thread, ya crazy kid!

:lol:

Posted: 10 Jun 2006, 06:45
by Big Si
nick the stripper wrote:
Big Si wrote:Hasn't Bowie been doing that for the last 10 yrs?

I understand that he loaded the lyrics to every song he'd ever written into the program, and out came loads of new lyrics :D
I don’t know about Automatic Writing, but Brion Gyson came up with the cut-up method, and then William S. Burroughs used it for his Nova Trilogy, influencing Genesis P-Orridge and David Bowie, who both used the cut-up techniques in their work; Genesis more extensively than Bowie.

I’ve got footage on videotape of Bowie being interviewed about cut-ups back in his cocaine days, while sitting cross-legged on a table with a pair of scissors, surrounded by cut-up newspapers he’s rearranging.
Och I knew he was a fan of the cut up method, I thought maybe this was the same programme he's now been using for his lyrics. :D

Insomnia's a right f**ker, but it means I've finally tracked down a copy of this :D

Beautiful! 8) *








*it's at the bottom of the page

Posted: 10 Jun 2006, 06:55
by nick the stripper
Big Si wrote: Beautiful! 8)
A bit of the old drone music, a?

I feel in the mood to listen to some 'La Monte Young' now. :D

Posted: 11 Jun 2006, 10:31
by emilystrange
why do people need o do that any more now that forums exist?

Posted: 11 Jun 2006, 16:10
by timsinister
:lol: :lol:

Em, with that kind of logic, these mind-expanding rambles would never occur. Let the boys have their fun...

Posted: 11 Jun 2006, 16:21
by emilystrange
that's not something i normally allow, mr sinister