Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Mentally Insane




Sometimes, late at night I'll find myself perusing old photo caches I've made of all the photos I've ever taken. (File management people!) I'll usually come across a photo I like (amidst the bajillions that I absolutely hate, photographers, you know how it is) and I'll edit it, usually in a state where I am dreaming about what I am doing as I do it, and then I'll wake up again and keep editing.

I've always been trying to discover a different me; a personality that I can only find on the verge of falling asleep, where my mind is shutting down and letting everything out. It's an extremely weird thing, nothing spiritual or anything, just psychological. (Or psycho.) In the end I usually fall asleep and forget everything that happened and end up with random things like this photo, half edited and completely different from the other photos that I've edited in the series, but from it I can gleam certain information about my subconscious.

I've written in journals and tried to write as long as I could before I just fell asleep on the paper and pen, hoping to forget that brief moment when you make that jump from the world to inside your head. Reading it back can answer an amazing number of things. What I truly care about, for instance, or why I did a certain thing. I'll hear songs that have never been written, as though they're playing from speakers, very loud, and very clear. Those are the hardest to capture. I'll have to try to mix a song like this sometime.

It's very difficult, and I am approaching it now. It's hard to keep your concentration, for instance, I just spent a good ten minutes explaining to a friend in an imaginary situation why I believe God made the world in literally seven days as opposed to seven "God" days, meaning millions of years. These tangents, I believe, are part of a dream, as though I am explaining it to someone in a dream. Are dreams really that intelligent? How can I create all the instruments in a song as I write it in my head in real time and "audibly" hear it? I feel like my brain is fed up with thinking about bills and school and making my body move, so it focuses all of its power on creating, and this is where I go when I lack creativity.

All in all, this is highly experimental, and I'm probably just rambling about it because I'm almost at that point right now. Don't try this with things like math, or problem solving, or figuring out what to get your girlfriend for her birthday, because she actually doesn't want a green frosty covered with snowflakes. (She must be crazy, cause that sounds awesome right now.)

2 comments:

  1. Jeff Mangum of neutral milk hotel says he writes all of his songs in that state right before sleep, and they're all amaaaazing. I wish I could do things like that, but I love actual sleep too much.
    Journaling is so good. You should keep them so you can show your kids someday.

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  2. His songs are amazing. And you're right, I love sleep as well, but it's always so much better in the morning than at night.

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