Saturday 20 September 2008

On Writing - And Sleeping

One writing technique I like to use is this Surrealist or Dada technique (I think it is anyway) where you cut up bits of your one-line notes to make a poem. Burroughs used the cut-up technique a lot, and it makes the piece hard to read but it's ingenious in its own right. If used properly.

I thought of a technique of writing one word a day. Then over time you put those words together, but that would take ages. But it's all about having them make sense with no sense at all. I like to think I coined the phrase 'Song Line.' This is a line in a poem or a song that sounds almost exactly like the previous line, but with different words. (I found out it's a real technique called Mondegreen, Hendrix used it in Purple Haze). John Lennon could do that. You find it happening in songs, and sometimes it doesn't happen and you only think it does. EXAMPLE: 'Romantic young kissable lips,' from a Frank Turner song. I turned around to be 'Manic unkissable lips.' You see? Also, Kerouac gives the idea, not to cut-up- but to write as first intended. The first thing you think of is what you write. EXAMPLE 2: 'Gorilla lightbulb, hat sits down, lamppost bags paper plughole, wet frog night day lights pushy.' That came from the top of my head, it sounds rubbish, but a technique like that can be worked on if there's a specific theme going on.

Also, you ever get that weird feeling of loss when you sleep during the day? I did today, I slept for 4 hours (2-6) and I lost the day. I had been working all morning, though. I also got the feeling of being watched. There's a strange lack of peace in day-time sleep.

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