Hi [MENTION=13101]edthecynic[/MENTION]
This reminds me of trying to compare people who write by physically writing down their thoughts linearly, and think of it as that came from them and their writing process.
Versus me and other poet friends who have a "channeling" process of writing. We can feel an inspiration come to us from a higher source, and then we edit and transcribe it.
To other people, I wrote that poem or song.
To me, I was taking dictation and trying to interpret and fine tune the signal so I could capture the message in the most clarified words or format.
If this isn't coming from "some God" or some "person in the past connected by conscience or karma" it could be me "tapping into" the future printed form of a letter or song,
and I am writing/editing it in my head in advance of the final finished form.
So I compare it to hearing someone talk in the distance, and writing down the words I can discern. and the closer the person gets to coming into my immediate presence, the closer the words are to that sound signal.
With writing letters I have published in the newspaper, I felt I was tapping into the mind of the editor picking which letters would be revised and printed, or tapping into my own future mind when I read my printed letter,
but I am in the past beforehand, trying to write the draft of that letter.
With some letters I "felt" in advance WHICH would be printed entirely as is,
and WHICH lines would be cut, so I didn't need to edit those as they weren't going to keep them anyway, and I just focused on the words that I knew exactly what the finished version would be. The signal was clear on those. The words I felt would be cut were fleeting and did not carry the same weight as the words that were going to stay on the page.
I felt I was channeling the future. But other people would say I wrote that.
The funniest irony is that I have trouble editing my own writing to be that short.
So I have trouble seeing how the heck I wrote these myself, to come out that short.
here are examples:
http://www.houstonprogressive.org/letters.html
I joke that I must have karma with Thomas Jefferson or some Founding Father who keeps wanting to get the last word in about Constitutional laws and church-state issues.
I feel like I am used as a "human typewriter" for some muse or spirit who still has a lot to say about politics!
By how the composition can move me to joy or tears when I play it long after the physical composer has passed. How you get from there to we all should be like Beethoven simply because having common physical attributes like a brain and fingers somehow must make us all exactly the same, even though we can be a different height and weight for example, is a bit of a stretch.
By how the composition can move me to joy or tears when I play it long after the physical composer has passed.
We both agree that is spiritual. The question is whether the physical alone created it or the spiritual working through the physical?
Well there is no denying that until the physical composer existed there was no composition. The physical composer clearly came first and then the composition, there is no denying that, as to the spiritual working through the physical is pure speculation. We know without a doubt that the physical composer is essential for the composition, but there is doubt as to whether the spiritual is essential for the composer. Like the existence of God, it can't be ruled out but there is a question about whether it is needed.
Here is a poem that people will say sounds like I channeled Emily Dickinson:
A Message from the Universe
Behind the Iron Curtain,
Beyond the Fall of Rome,
There's Hope in the uncertain,
And Truth in the unknown.
Beneath the stars and planets,
Along the coral reef,
A method calms the madness,
And war gives in to peace.
Fear not my changing surface
For what may lie below,
But trust a higher Purpose
That you already know.
(I think I wrote this before I heard that all of Emily Dickinson's poems
can be sung to the Yellow Rose of Texas. If this was her voice or spirit
channeling through my head to write this down, it fits the tune!)
The most disturbing "channeling process" happened when I was in the middle of an ongoing debate with a Catholic teacher at our school over the relationship between sexuality and spirituality. He was saying material lust was bad; and I felt that even though some bad karma incarnates in romantic relations, this is to motivate us to grow and resolve those issues, so of course the most intense karma is going to land in family and romantic relations where we can find them and work on them, instead of letting them pass down to the next generation. In my frustration to find him so closeminded and judgmental, I started to write a poem from the voice of a woman lecturing a man.
to my shock, a TIME magazine mailed to the school about that time contained a reference to Heloise and Abelard I never heard of before. When I looked them up online, I found quotes and arguments of her words, that sounded just like the "voice in my head" dictating the poem as a rebuttal and sharp rebuke against this man. So I felt it matched teh "spirit" of Heloise scolding Abelard. But I never heard of them before, and I had already started writing the draft of the poem. The same voice/message in my head finished the poem:
I wonder if clever Aristotle
Ever fumbled a baby bottle
In the dark of night, while the infant cried,
Only to hear those cries subside
At the breast of a mother nursing her child
To the tune of a runic lullaby.
I ask the world's astrologers
Who map the heavens above:
How many of your philosophers
Have ever been in love?
I also wonder if Thomas Aquinas
Ever pondered or stopped to define as
Simple a concept as "cuddly" or "cute"
Beyond what scholars could refute!
Go ask the great astronomers
Who count the stars and such:
How many Saints could quantify
The impact of a woman's touch?
Some critics pick on feminists,
Saying they need a "good night kiss."
When I read books as dry as this,
I wonder whose point is being missed!
If, after Einstein, mass is proved
Energy more slowly moved,
There is no need to separate
Thought from motion, Church from State,
Jew from Gentile, God from truth,
Earth from Heaven, faith from proof.
Natural laws and fate are one,
And that's my "Summa Contra None."
If my words you understand,
You're worthy to be called a man;
Or, better yet, profess my fault
To prove you're worth your Mass in salt!
[I still hear this in my head as a British accent, so maybe I am channeling it being recited in the future in that "lyrical beautiful voice" -- poetic but clearly scolding this dry theologian
claiming to teach God's love but missing the whole point of love and beauty in life.]
One and only one...
