Dreams and sleep seem a big part of Momus songs ( ie Mistaken of Medieval Memories of Manhattan, US Knitting, Lovely Tree, Virtual Reality ). Do you think any of the ideas you are coming up with will turn into future songs as some of them seem very much like song ideas? I remember this automatic style of writing was also used extensively on "Summerisle" too.
Actually, Andre Breton came into my mind when I was watching the performance on Saturday. An interesting (if a little verbose) article outlines this in great detail and also mentions a number of favourite Momus thinkers:
"In the end of the nineteenth century the traditional emphasis on the thinking autonomous subject came under attack from different areas within the intellectual environment. Marx, Nietzsche and Freud, all in their own way, unthroned the subject from her idealist seat that German had given her. Marx made the subject dependent on the social-economical structures; Nietzsche allegedly proved that our ideal values (of ethics, religion, science and any other part of our lives) are nothing but a set of prejudices; Freud devaluated conscious life of the subject to a correlate of the subconsciousness out of reach of the subject's self.
Breton was shaped in this intellectual environment. Especially Freud can be seen as of direct importance for his work. As a medical student Breton came across Freud's ideas. Freud's therapy of 'free association' has been of influence for the development of what Breton called "automatic writing."
This seems to very much the approach you are using. I do think that this period of twilight sleep is a very creative place to draw ideas from. Sometimes the things that have been going on in creative work carried out in the day, merge and coalesce into a more random and often more interesting arrangement then the conscious mind can conceive. Glad to see that I am not the only one this happens to.
Richard
Ps I have an awful cold I caught from the extremes of the NY heat and air-conditioning ( LA has a lot more temperate climate humidity wise). I'd pump up your vitamin levels to avoid getting sick if I were you !
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Breton
Date: 2005-06-30 05:44 pm (UTC)Actually, Andre Breton came into my mind when I was watching the performance on Saturday. An interesting (if a little verbose) article outlines this in great detail and also mentions a number of favourite Momus thinkers:
http://galton.uchicago.edu/~wit/automatic_writing.htm
"In the end of the nineteenth century the traditional emphasis on the thinking autonomous subject came under attack from different areas within the intellectual environment. Marx, Nietzsche and Freud, all in their own way, unthroned the subject from her idealist seat that German had given her. Marx made the subject dependent on the social-economical structures; Nietzsche allegedly proved that our ideal values (of ethics, religion, science and any other part of our lives) are nothing but a set of prejudices; Freud devaluated conscious life of the subject to a correlate of the subconsciousness out of reach of the subject's self.
Breton was shaped in this intellectual environment. Especially Freud can be seen as of direct importance for his work. As a medical student Breton came across Freud's ideas. Freud's therapy of 'free association' has been of influence for the development of what Breton called "automatic writing."
This seems to very much the approach you are using. I do think that this period of twilight sleep is a very creative place to draw ideas from. Sometimes the things that have been going on in creative work carried out in the day, merge and coalesce into a more random and often more interesting arrangement then the conscious mind can conceive. Glad to see that I am not the only one this happens to.
Richard
Ps I have an awful cold I caught from the extremes of the NY heat and air-conditioning ( LA has a lot more temperate climate humidity wise). I'd pump up your vitamin levels to avoid getting sick if I were you !