Flights Of Fancy
Why is a raven like a writing desk?
The past days, I’ve been reading a biography of Lewis Carroll and thinking lots about my own relationship to words, sound, rhythm and the mysteries of creativity.
When I think of writers and creativity Carroll is way up there in my personal pantheon. Along with Gass, Borges, Seuss, Dylan, Shakespeare, Villon, Breton, Calvino, Pound, Cummings, Mallarme, Berryman, Rexroth.
Many try to pin down “creativity” in writers. For writers, I’m convinced it is a true and deep sensitivity to sound and meaning. Like a shaman, a creative writer takes a journey beyond with their gift of language, language that is by necessity, meaning infused sound.
People have often asked me how I remain “creative”. I just don’t get it - how one can NOT be creative. It’s always on, if I need to access it. Never had a moment of writer’s block. If something sets me off, it sets me off. I’m in my own head, muttering words from some strange stream. A flight of fancy.
A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing. - Macbeth
I realized through time, I suffered from Foerster’s Syndrome. It is a condition where one has an incessant need to pun. And a pun is basically the deepest form of intelligence and thought we have. It’s on a spectrum and I don’t have it in its severe form, now that I’ve learned to contain it. But at times it can get heightened for me and each word leads to an impulse to “connect” that sound meaning, with a deeper, different meaning. And on and on, it goes. One word leads to another word. At bottom, it is an over-sensitivity to sound. One is sensitive to sound in the sense that sounds are no longer arbitrary in meaning but contain meaning beyond their use in word.
I’ve never had a problem writing because words are always available. And once I have one word, I’m off to the races, it’s another word, another meaning and anon. Actually, my problem at times can be to stop.
Degas was discussing poetry with Mallarmé; "It isn't ideas I'm short of… I've got too many", said Degas. "But Degas," replied Mallarmé, "you can't make a poem with ideas. … You make it with words.
One amazing book on the subject, another fellow from Carroll’s time, is William Blood’s - The Phonetic Alphabet. No reference remains of it on the internet. I have only some photocopies of his pamphlet in storage, up on the farm. It was the inspiration for my own Idiot’s Dictionary. In his small volume, Blood details how each letter has meaning, emotion. Contrary to all the narrow-minded linguists of now and then, he lists the qualities of each letter (actually sound - letters just representing a particular sound). A good example is how the gutteral “u” is used across all languages to express disgust, in swear words, as revulsion. fUck, Ugh, cUnt, rUnt, cUss for example.
Twinkle, twinkle, little bat!
How I wonder what you're at!
Up above the world you fly,
Like a teatray in the sky. |
- Lewis Carroll
Carroll had his flights of fancy too. It’s nice to know I got kin. I’ve learned to live with my impulsive need to pun. Mostly, it just sits inside my head, spining round. My Jabberwocky. But some days, some nights, I let it run off the end of my pen. Like this poem, I just tapped out now.
Thoughts
"Often we have to get away from speech in order to think clearly."
— R. S. Woodworth, Experimental Psychology
to two too =s 3
no thinking thin king
run on sentence life sentence
le mot juste
Ommm Ahhh Oh! Yeah shhhhhhhhhh
says the tired tire
wee wee wee all the way
to the small home hole
Ole Ole Ole cafe au lait O! Lay
lady lay……
springs sing
in the flower bed
every year why ear?
we’re here weir
damn it! damn it! damn it!
aswants the tin mad!
steeling a way
anyway,
something like that
3 eees
with ease
we do as we please
stuckkkkkkkkkkkkin
bloody place body face
two faced the mirror
or rathOR
saw themselves in two
two pieces suits you
ewe moo you and who
who who who who
hoots the unfoul owl
Ough! aaaH! Ouch!
we too two wake up
at a wake
who who who who
died? Lewis
carolled
no question to mark
the grave
question a quest
ask again, request
Hark! who who who
goes there
any way or
somewhere like that
cuz THAT
is how it goes
goes goes ooooooooos
around
another round please
the wait ‘er is over
we have time to
two all ready drunks
drink up get down
kup after hiccup
to ketchup
words aren’t enough
but they’re all
we hal ve
ah!!! So unfair there is
no fair where
we’re goinggoinggoingone
all sawn
see saw
in two pieces
who says.