Automatic writing.

Recently I've been researching into the concept of 'automatic writing' (a process in which a person writes something, usually by hand, supposedly without conscious thought of what they are writing) - Thank you wikipedia. It got me thinking about my rambles and their production and whether or not it dwells under the umbrella of automatism. When I write I am not anticipating the next words or sentences, I tend to start off with a specific situation or feeling I want to extract from my being, and from that I steer off into a host of other emotional avenues. These are only accessed when I am writing, in everyday normal life I don't venture down those alleys of thinking, but when the paper is out and my pen is scratching furiously whats occurring in my brain I never know what's going to come out.

After fleeting around the Internet trying to find out more about automatism I came across a sub genre of surrealism entitled 'surrealist automatism'. It is much different to the medium inspired definition of automatism which says that 'spirits' or even 'ghosts' are influencing the automatic drawings/thoughts. The idea behind the automatic drawing is playing with chance, losing rational control of what is produced. It tosses up a whole whirlwind of questions about chance and pre-decided thought, whether drawings are ever automatic such as Jackson Pollocks work, how can his works be created totally at random and chance? Each hurling of paint must have some form of pre-decided judgement. 

Andre Masson - Automatic drawing

Jackson Pollock 'One'

 

 

 

 

 

This little expenditure into automatic writing has made me want to reflect more deeply into the production of my writing 'drawings'. I need to be more aware of their relevance. I'm going to carry on dabbling in this, it's interested me enough to want to no more, I'll dabble in a bit more research and get back to this later.