• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Writing Classics in Your Sleep

K

KeyserXSoze

Gone But Not Forgotten
(ACCOUNT RETIRED)
Joined
Jun 2, 2002
Messages
944
Two very famous songs are said to have been composed (at least in part) while the writers slept.

'Yesterday' by Paul McCartney is one, and the riff from 'Satisfaction' was played on tape in sleep (or near sleep) by Keith Richard. Any other case of genius occurring in sleep? And can I have some of what they're having?http://www.nyrock.com/features/1996/kr_story.asp
Keith woke up in a Clearwater hotel on the morning of May 9th, 1965 with the riff from "Satisfaction" swirling through his head. As legend has it, Mr. R & R immediately recorded the riff on a cassette player he kept at bedside, and the rest is history. "You can hear me drop the pick and the rest of the tape is me snoring," says Keith. "The only way I found it again was, the next morning I checked out my gear, and the tape was at the wrong end. It had played all the way through."
Click to expand...

(Not sure if this belongs here, but it struck me that these may be great PR stories that might be UL's - mods please move or merge as you wish)
 
Creativity in dreams...

Well the idea for 'Frankenstein' is supposed to have come to Mary Shelley in a dream and Robert Louis Stevenson's 'Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde' is supposed to have arrived by the same route.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Kubla Khan came in a laudanum induced dream...
 
Giuseppe Tartini claimed the Devil visited him in a dream and played him The Devil's Sonata, which I think was his biggest hit.
 
Actually, I've experienced it, and it is a very peculiar experience (though the results were certainly far from genius ;))

For instance, a couple of months ago I was trying to fathom some stuff about relationship of grammar to logic (yeah, I know, gripping...) I retired to sleep, had a restless night and shortly before waking saw and heard the solution in an exceedingly vivid fashion.

Whenever it has happened to me, it has either been in that transition between deep sleep and wakefulness, or when I have been in a fever due to illness (when it is a very colourful experience indeed).
 
Incidentally, another distinctive feature of the experience - you know with absolute certainty that it is perfect, and that you have to copy it exactly as you cannot match it through conscious effort. Hence the imperative people feel to dash the impression down as quickly as possible.
 
I read somewhere that "Dracula" was inspired by a wet dream that Bram Stoker had. Anyway, as anyone involved in anything creative knows, dreams are EXTREMELY important, it's where we get some of our best ideas.
 
I have very similar dreams, I dream of a roll of parchment that turns as I read it, the use of laungauge in it is wonderful, I know that my mind is making it up, but can never remeber it when fully awake:(
 
In 'The Western Lands' William Burroughs wrote about an old writer living out beyond the train tracks, beyond the river.

His only companion was Smoker, the ghost cat. And everynight he dreamed great novels - he knew in his dreams that he had a great novel. The words flashed in front of him but he could never remember them at dawn.

Isn't it like reading a dictionary whilst experiencing a feeling? If only you could rearrange the words then you would have the greatest novel ever written.

The old writer couldn't write anymore because he had reached the end of words, the end of what can be done with words. And then? "British we are, British we stay." How long can one hang on in Gibraltar, with the tapestries where mustached riders with scimitars hunt tigers, the ivory balls one inside the other, bare seams showing, the long tearoom with mirrors on both sides and the tired fuchsia and rubber plants, the shops selling English marmalade and Fortnum & Mason's tea...clinging to their Rock like the rock apes, clinging always to less and less.

In Tangier the Parade Bar is closed. Shadows are falling on the mountain.

"Hurry up please. It's time."
Click to expand...

EDIT: thinking about this. William Burroughs was very clever to make the writer, and writing, into the subject. That bit isn't unique, of course (witness all gonzo derived journalism).

But he did it in his own special way - and managed to write with real style and beauty about those dreams of great novels.
 
I heard frank black / black francis / that bloke out of the Pixies wrote pretty much all his lyrics in the first few minutes after waking. That may explain why they don't make any sense at all...
 
I think most of all of Lovecraft's work was based on dreams and nightmares. But the stories themselves didn't come to him fully-formed while he slept of anything like that.
 
Alexius said:
Incidentally, another distinctive feature of the experience - you know with absolute certainty that it is perfect
Click to expand...

Heh - reminds me of Tenacious D's 'Greatest song in the world' :)
 
Don't forget Kekule. He dreamt of monkeys with snakes in their mouths, and it revealed the molecular structure of Benzene to him, paving the way for modern organic chemistry.
 
Has anybody mentioned Samual taylor Coleridges 'Kubla Khan' and the man from Porlock??
 
Lillith said:
Has anybody mentioned Samual taylor Coleridges 'Kubla Khan' and the man from Porlock??
Click to expand...

I was going to, but someone came to the door...:D
 
One of the Chemical Brothers says he wrote the strings from "Come With Us" in a dream.

I thought this had happened to me once. "Hello Nasty" by the Beastie Boys had just come out, and I had fallen asleep listening to it for the first time. A few days later a melody came to me in one of my dreams, and I was so excited - and worried that I'd forget it - that I scampered around trying to find a tape recorder (nigh on impossible as we were on holiday at the time). Eventually I phoned our home phone and left a message of me singing it and describing it, very excitedly, on the answering machine. I was convinced that it was going to be the greatest song ever.

Satisfied, I then put the Beasties CD on again. And discovered that I'd just dreamt the melody from "The Negotiation Limerick File". We then had to suffer me going "kind of like a guitar, going doo, doo, doo, doo" etc. on the answerphone when we got home.

OK I didn't say it was an interesting story

Can someone help me with this tag please? *points up* :(
 
At the Texas Library Association Convention this weekend, I picked up a copy of the late lamented Joan Lowery Nixon's autobio/advice book for young writers, *The Making of a Writer.* Those of us who attended conventions with her had heard a lot of the material before but it's nice to have it all in one place.

Anyway, the relevant bit for this thread is in chapter 5, where she explains how her accountant father helped her improve her math grade by telling her to review the problems she had the most trouble with immediately prior to going to bed. He told her that, if she did this, she would wake up knowing how to work the problems. This worked so well for her that she started doing it with other things, too.

Fast forward a few decades to when she was writing *The Seance,* her second YA mystery, and was interrupted by life. :

-- "You work on it, I can't," I told my subconscious mind, and put the manuscript aside.

A few months later I was baby-sitting Melia, our first grandchild. To help her get to sleep for her afternoon nap, I lay on the bed with her, singing lullabies. Soon after she fell asleep, I did, too.

I dreamed that the door to the bedroom opened and a group of people filed in. They stood at the foot of the bed, looking at me.

They were easy to recognize. I knew them as the characters I was writing about in *The Seance.*

"I wish she'd get back to our story," one of them said. "She's put us off for too long."

Another character shook his head and looked at me sadly. "It's because she hasn't worked out some problems in the story yet. I think she's procrastinating."

"Why?" someone asked.

"Because she's wrong about me," a character spoke up. "She thinks I'm the murderer, but I'm not. She doesn't realize that yet."

At that momen Melia stirred and woke up...

The next day I began working once more on the story. The character who had claimed to be innocent had been right. I soon discovered the identitiy of the real culprit and eagerly finished my manuscript. --

Much as I admire Joan, I don't think *The Seance* can be called a classic in the usual sense. However, if it's good enough for a four-time Edgar winner, it's good enough for most of us; and her career certainly demonstrates that you can accomplish a lot if you'll just get out of your own way and listen to yourself.
 
I frequently have dreams which pan-out perfectly like a really good film.
A lot of the time dreams can be disjointed and confusing (despite continuing to 'make sense' on some inner level), but these dreams are really exciting, and far more creative and original than anything I could muster whilst awake !
I feel sure that if I were able to bring these epics into the waking world, as complete and untainted as they were dreamt, than I would have several oscar-winning film scripts, or bestsellers to my name.

But alas, I forget.
 
Does this count?

David Bronstein (no, not the one who changed his name to Leon Trotsky) once dreamed an entire game of chess in his sleep. This may not be unconnected to the fact that he was (still is?) a leading chess grandmaster who once drew a match for the world championship.

I'll get me coat...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top