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Strange compulsion

I

intaglio

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I recently put message in the Poetry thread with a little Haiku (a Japanese poetic form 3 lines totalling 17 syllables). Ok so perhaps it wasn't very good perhaps it was but the circumstances of writing it seemed a little Fortean for I was compelled to write it and compelled is not too strong a word.

The last line came into my head and I needed to put it into some visible form. For an instant I thought it was a beginning to a rhymed poem. Then the first and second line as concepts which I had to play with but they had to be written, it was rather like I imagine receiving a spirit message might be.

Now I've felt this compulsion to write things in this way before, there were a couple of folk songs, something amusing for an entertainment a letter to someone who needed cheering but always the same compulsion following a few lines coming into my head.

Now the Greeks had a word for it, a spirit that sat on your shoulder or took over your body to perform some act, they called it a genius

Does anyone else know of people who have felt the same or has anyone here had similar experiences?

The link to the thread is here if you really want it
 
Yes. most definitely but not for a while
I was having a hard time a few years ago and one night i got some words in my head that didn't seem to mean anything in particular but i wrote them down and many, many more besides. I can't remember thinking "i'll write this or that" but it seemed to just flow.
I felt so much better when i'd finished. I've still got it and i look at it sometimes and think "did i write that?"
 
Sometimes I do get the compulsion to write, but not as much now as when I was younger. I also find that if I am writing when in this mindset my writing is much more fluent than when I have to write for a reason, say at work. I suspect part of being able to write professionaly is being able to summon up this particular mental state at will, which is one of many reasons why I'll never make a living as a writer. Perhaps you wrote what you did because you felt on that occassion you had something important to say?
 
The first fanfic I wrote was a part of a dream and it was so vivid I felt compelled to write it, I suppose that's the same kind of thing.
 
Yes that odd..i sort of wrote a novel that way!..at least the first 20,000 bones of it anyway... and then went over it and added things ... good way of getting words that buz round ur head out and good way to pour bile away too.... and no its not published (as many will know)... but the first lines realy did come from "elswhere"...
 
intaglio said:
Now the Greeks had a word for it, a spirit that sat on your shoulder or took over your body to perform some act, they called it a genius
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I've experienced this many times, usually when walking past the Dog and Duck. I didn't realise it made me a genius though.

In writing there are certainly times when it just flows, almost as if someone else is writing for you. I believe Charles Dickens went on record as saying this happened frequently to him, and that it was almost as if the characters were dancing as real people before him (or words to that effect).
 
rather like Blake... a dimmly remembered quote... "why have u stoped painting St anthony?"... "Because St Peter is standing roght in front of him"....(may have been other saints)
 
sidecar_jon said:
rather like Blake... a dimmly remembered quote... "why have u stoped painting St anthony?"... "Because St Peter is standing roght in front of him"....(may have been other saints)
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Even if that is not an actual quotation it deserves to be LOL :D
 
Although at first sight this topic doesn't seem that Fortean, I think that a compulsion to produce narratives and the ability to have what appear to be independent entities existing in our minds are of great relevance to our field of study.

For a start, it casts light on the possible motivations for hoaxers, and why people should persist with hoaxes when its obviously to their detriment. It also gives us a possible explanation as to how people who channel entities are able to do so in a 'voice' that is clearly very different from their own, and which they sincerely believe has an exterior source.

It also leads us to the puzzling question of why humans seem complelled to both create and consume fictions. What possible evolutionary purpose does it serve to do this? And, if there really are aliens, and fictions are a purely human trait, would it make our culture completely incomprehensible?

Think how much time and money is spent just in the film industry....
 
It also leads us to the puzzling question of why humans seem complelled to both create and consume fictions. What possible evolutionary purpose does it serve to do this? And, if there really are aliens, and fictions are a purely human trait, would it make our culture completely incomprehensible?
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Perhaps, it's like the play of kittens and puppies, pretend hunting (and killing). We understand the world by modelling it inside our heads. We communicate by creating approximations of those models through language.

Language is a clumsy instrument for the purposes of conveying `truth.' That's why a really good storyteller, or poet, has always been highly prized. Because they can use their skills of rhetoric to circumvent and short-circuit the limitations of language to hint at greater truths.
 
Howard/Conan

Back to the original question - Robert E Howard reported something similar when writing the Conan stories (which are very different in theme and feel from the film and a million miles from the TV series, and, er let's not mention the cartoon.)
M
 
wintermute said:
It also leads us to the puzzling question of why humans seem complelled to both create and consume fictions. What possible evolutionary purpose does it serve to do this? And, if there really are aliens, and fictions are a purely human trait, would it make our culture completely incomprehensible?

Think how much time and money is spent just in the film industry....
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IMHO fiction in any medium gives us the opportunity to experience far more in the emotive and intellectual range of human experience than otherwise possible. Even before the printing press their were mummers and strolling players. Go back into the mists of time and there was someone to recount creation myths and legends. Whatever its purpose its always been with us so it must be an important one.

As to the spirit of inspiration, I occasionally feel a compulsion to write things down. There aren't any inner voices tho just plain compulsion. If the five sentence novel ever becomes popular I'll have quite a few to publish.
 
'Consider fiction phenomenologically. The word itself is derived from the past particple of the Latin fingere, to shape, fashion, form or mould. We take it for granted that there will always be fiction of one kind or other in the form of stories: forming; shaping. Why do we take that for granted? Why do we make fiction? Why do we say 'What if?'

We make fiction because we are fiction. Because there was a time when 'it lived' us into being. Because there was a time when something said, 'What if there are people?' A word, perhaps, whispered in the undulant amorphous ear of the primordial soup: 'What if there are people, hey? What if?'

It lived us into being and it lives us still. We make stories because we are story. The fabric of our myths and folk-tales is in us before birth. The action systems of the universe are the origin of life and stories. The patterns of blue-green algae and the numinous wings of the Great Nebula in Orion and therunic scrawl of human chromosomes are stories. Begotten by no one knows what, stories beget people to live them. We are the offspring of immesurable ideas.'

Russell Hoban - 'Household Tales' from 'The Moment under The Moment'
 
Um... "In the beginning was the Word"?
 
Um... "In the beginning was the Word"?
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That is the question, Rynner my friend, at the very heart of modern semiotic, linguistic, philosophical theory. Is there, as Saussure, C.L. Strauss and others have said, a `Logos' at the centre of the structures of signification we create for our selves. Or, is there as Jaques Derrida and his mentor, Paul De Man, have written, no center, no logos.

De Man and Derrida's `Deconstructionism' suggests that there is no center. No kernel of truth, or meaning in our systems of culture and belief. Everything is fair game and relative, only in its relation to everything else. There is no sure foundation, no solid base, no history upon which we can rely. Everything we believe we understand is up for grabs and subject to the free play of unattached signifiers. The center cannot hold.

`A word means exactly what I want it to mean neither more nor less.' To badly quote Humpty Dumpty.
 
`A word means exactly what I want it to mean neither more nor less.' To badly quote Humpty Dumpty.
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Personally, I doin't believe that. I think `deconstructionism' is dangerous bollocks. There must be, as Umberto Eco pointed out, a `Modus Ponens,' a common agreed ground of understanding, in order that a mutually comprehensible discourse can take place.

De Mans, and his heir Derrida, were a pair of miserable sophists out to bully and bamboozle the unwary. So there!

Willow agrees with me and she's a lot smarter than I am.
 
Didn't JFK once say something like "some people say what if, I say, why not"?
 
Didn't JFK once say something like "some people say what if, I say, why not"?
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He also said he was a `Berliner.'

(Jam doughnut joke here.)
 
AndroMan said:
He also said he was a `Berliner.'

(Jam doughnut joke here.)
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Ok, so sometimes he had a good script writer and sometimes he didn't.
 
Getting back on thread (how unlike me!) I sometimes find, on this MB, that I start to make some innoccuous post like "I agree with what so-and-so says" when some brilliant idea idea swims into my head and I bang out two or three paragraphs on something that I'd had no intention of writing when I clicked 'Reply'.

Sadly, it doesn't seem to be working this time... :(
 
Sadly, it doesn't seem to be working this time
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Has your Muse forsaken you, mate? No wonder Keats calle her, `The Belle Dame sans merci!'

I'm sure she'll return to you, to whisper sweet nothings in your ear and put fire in your breast!
 
Re: Re: Strange compulsion

Originally posted by Dark Detective -- I've experienced this many times, usually when walking past the Dog and Duck. I didn't realise it made me a genius though.

In writing there are certainly times when it just flows, almost as if someone else is writing for you. I believe Charles Dickens went on record as saying this happened frequently to him, and that it was almost as if the characters were dancing as real people before him (or words to that effect).
Click to expand...
\\

Genius just means spirit. It means they saw it as a sprit coming to you, inspiring you. (putting a god's breath into you, breathing life into ideas, etc.)

And yes, Dickens could vividly visualize, and his method of writing was to go into a light trance, envsion the scene, and let it play out. He would think for a day or so, then write things down when he knew where they were going.

I often hear a sentence and, if I write it down, the rest will come, often verbatim, and often completely formed. My subconscious, or the spirits, have it all worked out. I write most short fiction this way, and for novels use the Dickensian method mostly. In fact, I'll do each morning's stint on a novel, then not even consciously think about it until next moring. Seems to work best that way, with second best being to think about where to move the story along to next day.

Hail Thoth, and Bless Gwydion
 
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