words such as buzz or murmur that imitate

"Give the people a new word and they think they have a new fact."
--Willa Cather
I wonder if any of us can remember when we learned to read. It's a memory I wish I held, but can't seem to bring it up in my mind fully.

Perhaps because it was more structured, I can remember learning the meaning of pieces of words--roots, prefixes, suffixes (Conjunction Junction on Saturday mornings, not withstanding)--and the power of the order of words. I remember learning how to curse. I do remember learning to write, I even remember learning how to write in "cursive style." In notebooks with rows of two solid lined pages with the dashed line in between. But I do not remember the moment I learned to read or to recognize words on a page. I wonder if anyone who learns to read at a young age can. I wonder if it is possible to remember what it was like before words had context or if that is something that disappears seconds after language is understood. All I know is, the moment letters put on a page came mean something to me is unknown.

I've been playing most of this evening with Thinkmap's Visual Thesaurus (clicking on the images will enlarge them for a better view of the text). It's not new, I've known about it for a while, and have played with it now and again, but, today, for some reason, maybe because my brain has been more frazzled than usual, I found myself in front of its tentacled connections for hours, fascinated with the word play.

I've often enjoyed toying with language and words. But I am especially fascinated by the language of thought and perception, their interwoven nature, and their visual associations. How lists of ideas and events, and even physical sensations may be associated with images and words; or sounds and words, or words and other words (ditto/Dorito as a friend has placed in my mind recently). I wonder why there are times words form visual associations other than the letters they use to form themselves. And what happens inside an individual's brain that makes these associations, it's not necessarily simply how something is read or misread, or misheard. I believe there is more to the fragmented narrative of our brains.

What I love, today especially, about Visual Thesaurus is how successful it is at pretending to achieve the randomness of human associations (or perhaps that is because they are not random after all?). It does not simply list synonyms and antonyms, its programmers were much more clever than that. It takes words and offers phrases that are not casually referenced and go beyond a computer's usual linear connections, mimicking the chaos of a human brain. And you can click on the associations endlessly, each time finding a changing relationship, between words, with new words and phrases; they shift, meanings altered, contexts lost, refusing conclusion.

the horrible burden of Time wrecking your back

And if sometimes you wake up, on palace steps, on the green grass of a ditch, in your room’s gloomy solitude, your intoxication already waning or gone, ask the wind, the waves, the stars, the birds, clocks, ask everything that flees, everything that moans, everything that moves, ... ask what time it is. And the wind, the waves, the stars, the birds, clocks, will answer, "It is time to get drunk! So as not to be the martyred slaves of Time, get drunk; get drunk constantly! On wine, on poetry, or on virtue, as you choose.” - Baudelaire

Oh, I'm exhausted. Haven't been sleeping well. The time shift didn't help much (good to know I'm not alone as "springing ahead" apparently increases both traffic accidents [by 7%] and the overall accident death rate [by 6.5%]). Enjoying, too, correspondences, interludes, and connections (and lots of ice cream). Have this buzz running through my brain and my thoughts have become cut-ups without need of any chemical assistance. A definite sign of sleep deprivation. That and difficulty focusing the eyes, moodiness, hallucinations, fragmented thinking, slurred speech, and diminished mental ability (though, no, I am not so far as to have gotten to some of these, as yet). And so, what better time than to return to creativity and altered consciousness? Paging Dr. Benway ...

In 1951, having been released from a Mexico jail after accidentally shooting and killing his wife in a "game" of William Tell, William S. Burroughs, who it goes without saying, was no stranger to altered states, journeyed to the Amazon in search of "the final fix"--a rumored telepathic, hallucinogenic drug called yage (pronounced ya-hay). Burroughs became fascinated with the drug (also known as ayahuasca) after learning of how it was used by natives to find things--lost bodies and souls, specifically. He recorded his journey and all of its lush incidents, in letters to his good friend, Allen Ginsberg, in what was later published as The Yage Letters. These notes and Burroughs' experiences during his travels also became the base for Naked Lunch (once criminal, now one of Time's "All-Time 100 Novels") as well as his "cut-up" writing form. The Yage Letters also includes Ginsberg's experiences during his own exploration of the drug, and his corresponding visions and terrors while on it.

As with Kerouac's structured quest for altered consciousness, so too was Burroughs', though his was also a quest through drugs to achieve this. He found himself a curandero and worked with him closely in order to experience not only the high, but also the ritualistic trance-state that the drug produces. It is not a casual experience, as both Burroughs and Ginsberg found out. After his first attempt, Burroughs wrote "checked into the hospital junk sick and spent four days there. They would only give me three shots of morphine and I couldn't sleep from pain and heat and deprivation." Without going into all of the gruesome detail of the body's reaction (you can read it here) the effect of the drug is to first purge you, bodily--from both ends--and then release you mentally. However, unlike Kerouac, for Burroughs (and for Ginsberg as well) the discovery was painful indeed, he did not find the enlightenment that he sought from the experience, not immediately anyway--the aforementioned novel and, more important, his "cut-up" form came afterward.

While his cut-up technique was literal, he would cut passages (by himself and other writers) and rearrange them randomly, from a prose perspective, he was seeking "the lost"--the hidden meaning of words. For Burroughs, the cut-up was "a montage of fragments ... consciousness is a cut up. Every time you walk down the street or look out of the window, your stream of consciousness is cut by random factors." The cut-up disturbed continuity, but he worked within the randomness, assigning it limits with a result he felt went only so far as the fact that it was unintentional. It was about the subliminal flow of information, and perception hidden from our conscious. It was meant to directly contradict popular-culture manipulations--to be guided away from the visible and the "virus" that words have become in our culture. By juxtaposing sentences--logical sequences not represented in our brains--he renders the words meaningless and their control over our brains harmless. The cut-up is a method for direct action against mind control. And while he did not accomplish this under direct influence of yage (he certainly wrote under the influence of many others, whether in Tangiers with Paul Bowles, or in New York, under any number of substances), what his experience of it did was open this mind view.

City Lights Books has just this month published a new, more complete edition called, Yage Letters Redux. The text includes some previously unpublished (and previously unpublishable) correspondence, as well as a detailed history of both the drug, and Burroughs' obsession with it.

so it is the basic law of life

A friend recently sent this bit of text to me, and I had never encountered it before. As with all things mysterious about the brain and its functions, I was truly tickled by it:

Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy,
it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a
wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the
frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The
rset can be a ttoal mses and you can sitll raed
it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn
mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but
the wrod as a wlohe.

Ah, chaos. If only the mind could find a set of keys so easily in a disheveled room as it can read the above paragraph. I am struck by redundancy. I notice, when reading--for any reason, be it pleasure, a subway advertisement, or to edit--it is one of the first things I pick at. But, generally it appears to me on a less intricate level. Never so much to the letter, as it were. Having never been good at math, I find the fact that my brain is so good at structure--planning, dates, organization--odd. It seems to come from some unknown piece of myself, yet it is one of the first things people notice about me.

In any event, the trick to the above (though there really isn't one), is that a good reader is able to successfully comprehend the text as written because only the internal letters have been randomized. Essentially, there is a logic to the disorder (there is enough information for one who has some essential knowledge) the mind is able to reconstruct the information so that it makes sense; it can extract, deconstruct, and rebuild before you even realize it has done so.

And amid another twist of connections, this evening's conversation, that at some point turned to the events of September 11 (I may dare touch on the novels that have appeared recently about this date, but I am not certain I can do so without some personal regret for it), brought to mind the children's book Unbuilding by David Macaulay. Macaulay is a fascinating artist and author who is known for is intricate explorations of the mechanics of everyday things. Macaulay's work, though written for children, is extraordinarily complex. His line art is minute and exacting in its detail. He takes items, usually architectural in nature (though also the human form), and he explains their essential being. For him, the forms he examines must be deconstructed in order to be understood--order to chaos for comprehension. Unbuilding takes the Empire State Building and undoes it. Bolts and all; in specific sequence.

There is a spread in the book (and also on the cover) that is a view looking downtown from what appears to be about 40th Street. And the Twin Towers, in their linear certainty still stand. Later, in a similar spread, they are obscured by clouds, and the Empire State Building is half dissolved (and there is one last image of this at night). I remember having the random thought after the first tower fell that, it couldn't stay that way. They both had to fall. To have one and not the other, would have been some kind of cruel rearrangement.

To those of us
who don't always
appreciate things
until they're gone

[the dedication for Unbuilding, published 1980]

of what is not present in the senses (part 2b)

I don't think one can sit down and say, "I want to write
a magnificent poem, and so I'm going to take LSD."
- Aldous Huxley
A little digging around and some interesting finds, including the Huxley quote above, which I like because it's the opposite of what Kerouac wanted from speed and expresses a different reasoning (or anticipated effect) behind experimenting with mind-altering substancees. Also came across some info on experimental work done by Oscar Janiger, a scientist who worked in the 1950s and 60s researching connections between LSD on creativity. The book LSD, Spirituality, and the Creative Process is about his work and was published in 2003. His studies are especially interesting because of the personalities who took part in his study--Janiger himself took part, admitting to having experimented over 10 times with LSD, which he described as having helped him see "many, many things were possible" (not especially helpful, but I suppose it gives him some sort of personal reference by which to judge other reactions.) In one trial, he used an artist, a scientist, and a writer--his belief was that a "prepared mind"--one inclined toward expansion and experimentation were the best subjects. This suits my needs as far as my personal exploration on the topic, but I wonder if it removes the science behind it by stacking the decks, as it were. In any event, his theory was that the writer--in this case, Anais Nin (though he worked with Huxley as well)--would be most able to describe the experience and whether their mind's world was in any way expanded by it. It appears he was correct in his theory, as apparently the artist was merely able to express "being expanded" by taking the drug, while Nin wrote of the experience:

The memory of the LSD experience is very clear and I wrote the whole thing out--a long, long, long reverie. And then I compared it to see whether the images brought on by LSD were similar to images and sensations and impressions I had already described. And I found them in my work--particularly in the first book I wrote, a prose poem, The House of Incest, which was made up of dreams. The material was so like what was brought on by LSD that it proved my point that this dream world is a world accessible to the poet, accessible to the artist. If we wouldn't belittle the artist and the poet so much, we wouldn't need drugs to reach these visions.

A fascinating slap at the world, those last two sentences, if a bit self-pitying (something no self-respecting artist is without a bit of ... heh). But, I especially like that for Nin, her aesthetic is consistent as far as her artistic output (whether it was good under either circumstance, well, that's subjective). She achieved, consciously through memory of her unconscious, and through drug-induced "expanded" consciousness, the same result. It's all just reaching in and being able to drag it out. Curious.

a single carrot, freshly observed (part 2)

So, (sorta) continuing where I left off in a pile of stones, with regard to the art of (or in) scientific writing ... What started out as a straight exchange of thoughts on the Lightman review, quickly devolved (on my end, naturally) when at some point in the email exchange, my friend mentioned, among others, some of Carl Sagan’s books as an example of “popular science writing.” I wrote in response that his work did indeed fall under the banner of being both artistic and scientific, and added, a bit facetiously, that part of his creative success might have had to do with his alleged frequent pot smoking. To which my friend responded:

The dope-smoking connection is probably empirical evidence for similar creative processes in the arts and sciences! If you can do art and creative aspects science while high, and especially effectively when high, but you can't do other types of work in an altered state, then that definitely suggests a commonality ...

And, well, a bit more scientific in nature than I dare go into here … but (yes, I always, eventually, bring it all back around) what this reminded me of was another Joshua Foer article that appeared in Slate where he used himself as a willing guinea pig for an experiment about creativity while under the influence. There’s nothing new in attempting to alter your conscious state in an effort to achieve a different perspective, but, what I liked about Foer’s attempt was his desired result. In the interest of science (always), Foer started taking Adderall, a drug usually prescribed to treat ADHD. Speed, essentially. I quite like the idea of amphetamines, a “cognitive” drug, as opposed to say, opium, or LSD. Basically Adderall and its ilk focus the individual’s brain, almost painfully, making it intent upon whatever the user is seeking to accomplish. Foer describes the effect, amusingly, as akin to having “been bitten by a radioactive spider”:

The results were miraculous … after whipping my brother in two out of three games of pingpong [sic]—a triumph that has occurred exactly once before in the history of our rivalry—I proceeded to best my previous high score by almost 10 percent in the online anagrams game that has been my recent procrastination tool of choice. Then I sat down and read 175 pages of Stephen Jay Gould's impenetrably dense book The Structure of Evolutionary Theory … When I tried writing on the drug, it was like I had a choir of angels sitting on my shoulders. I became almost mechanical in my ability to pump out sentences. The part of my brain that makes me curious about whether I have new e-mails in my inbox apparently shut down ... I didn't feel like I was becoming smarter or even like I was thinking more clearly. I just felt more directed, less distracted by rogue thoughts, less day-dreamy.

So, it makes complete sense that amphetamines would be a favorite of scientists (and students, etc.) as much as artists. What I am curious about the effect is, as far as the individual user responds, does it make the person better at things they are already good at or does it allow them to focus enough to be better at anything? Or a little of both? I imagine this would be difficult to gauge as most users are taking it to accomplish a specific task that they already have some affinity for and are seeking something they presume to exist inside themselves already.

Now, it’s no secret (certainly not here) that Jack Kerouac wrote On the Road while high on caffeine and Benzedrine (I can't imagine ...). What many might not know is that he did this specifically to write On the Road, he didn’t do it and then have the result be On the Road. That’s an important difference. What’s wonderful about him, as well, is how methodical he was in his spontaneity. All of his detailed preparation to achieve the effect of free-form. Take a look at his last requirement from his list of “Essentials of Spontaneous Prose”:

If possible write "without consciousness" in semi-trance (as Yeats' later "trance writing") allowing subconscious to admit in own uninhibited interesting necessary and so "modern" language what conscious art would censor, and write excitedly, swiftly, with writing-or-typing-cramps, in accordance (as from center to periphery) with laws of orgasm, Reich's "beclouding of consciousness." Come from within, out-to relaxed and said.

It’s incredible how close that is to Foer’s description of taking Adderall. What's interesting to me about Kerouac choosing speed is, it would seem to contradict his need for the free flow of ideas. Everything he writes in his "essentials" from the "set up" and the avoidance of structure, to the need for language without limit, I'd think would be blocked by having the mind pointed so much on the act, and yet, not so. And what of the resultant art? Is it more honest, as Kerouac suggests, by not being bogged down by our internal and external censors? And if so, how does putting the mind into extreme focus do this? And to what extent is the drug a part of the art itself—and could it even be considered a co-creator? Certainly it opens up avenues, but it doesn’t explain why some people need to use these kinds of “enhancements” to achieve the mental state that allows them to be able to create, where others don’t. And I don’t know the answers to these questions, but they fascinate me.

As for Sagan, I believe he was exceptional not only in his ability to work exclusively as a scientist and exclusively as a novelist, but also with the high level he was able achieve at both. He also had an acute awareness of where to draw the line when adding creativity and personality to science in order to effectively communicate, inform, and entertain (ie, Cosmos) on a “popular” level. I can’t think of anyone else right now that managed such a range, though I’m sure there are a few. As for Sagan’s use of pot, well, the choice suggests the need for the opposite effect of Adderall and Foer’s experiment, and that Sagan’s reason for using it was what my friend suggested above, that in this altered state he felt he was more effective than when he wasn’t (one could only assume he experimented and compared work he’d completed in both states before reaching any conclusion). I’d guess Sagan wanted assistance in freeing the more creatively inclined parts of a brain, that I’d also imagine, was dominated by science (I’m only assuming this, of course, he could well have used it for his scientific work, too).

Eh, but I do go on ... Haven’t even begun to touch on two of the other main topics I wanted to. Will (eventually, or perhaps continuously) go to additional parts of this, can’t not discuss the issue of memory and altered consciousness and of course, The Yage Letters. But I may need to slow down a little to gather it all better.

a pile of stones is not a house (part 1)

This is not really about him, but, I love Joshua Foer. I don't know too much about him, but I do know I find myself reading his reviews a lot (and that he is Jonathan Safran Foer's brother). He's one of those columnists that you get lucky to find every now and again, who always seems to write about topics that strike your fancy, do it consistently, and do it well. I often don't pay attention to reviewer names, particularly with online articles, but, Foer contributes to just about every online magazine I read, and I started to recognize him. When his review of Alan Lightman’s book The Discoveries: Great Breakthroughs in 20th Century Science, Including the Original Papers appeared in last week's issue of The Nation, I forwarded it to a friend. And after a little back and forth email discussion, Foer's review, some of his previous articles, and my friend's responses all kind of get intertangled into the next few (?) posts (bear with me ...). It's all got me thinking a little more about how we write (under what circumstances, state of mind, etc.), what we write (fiction, nonfiction, grocery lists), and how it is perceived (why is it being read? who needs to read it?), and oh, yeah, is it art?

From what I've gathered, Lightman's book is a celebration of the artistic aesthetic in scientific writing. Foer quotes him as writing, "Like poetry these papers have their internal rhythms, their images, their beautiful crystallizations, their sometimes fleeting truths ... [they are] the great novels and symphonies of science." Foer argues that in science "it's the ideas that matter, not how they're expressed." His example is the loss of the literary experience when reading the Cliffs Notes as opposed to reading the actual text versus reading a summary of Albert Einstein's original paper on special relativity compared to an updated text summary, which he felt would be more clear. His issue with Lightman’s “Sense of the Mysterious” (also the title of another Lightman book) is the question of whether scientists have a compulsive need to validate the worth of their work through the celebration of their part in it as creators, because, “in the arts, the individual is the essence,” whereas “the most important thing about a scientific result is not the scientist who found it.” (Dr. Robert Gallo might disagree ...) Foer argues that the strict guidelines required for scientific publication don't allow for stylistic freedoms; that for authors of peer reviewed papers, the focus must be on precision rather than "artistry."

The comparison of science and art is a trope that runs through much of Lightman's writing. In The Discoveries he writes that "Einstein was an artist as much as a scientist." What does that really mean? In what sense were Einstein's discoveries art—or for that matter any of the original papers Lightman has collected—except in the most meaningless stretch of metaphor?

But is it art? Ah, that question. If a scientific paper is “enjoyable” in the sense that the author’s ability compels the reader to finish and learn something from it, then I say, yes it is. It would necessarily have to involve craft to accomplish this. It's not enough to detail facts, even the most unimpeachable data is only as good as the author conveying it. As my friend wrote in his response to me, “it's not necessarily in these sorts of experiments, where new facts are discovered, it's in the synthesis, in the ability to put together a new paradigm from bits and pieces of seemingly unrelated evidence.” There is an art to that. I get the sense that this is part of Lightman’s point.

On the other hand, and this contradicts a lot of the above, there is the danger when considering the “art” of scientific writing—which often happens when discussing the more accessible Trade titles—of the work appearing less true somehow. It’s only natural, I suppose, like cookies over broccoli, anything that's fun or easy to understand must not be worthwhile. However, I don’t buy into the belief that language made more user-friendly (write for your audience) is somehow less true. If the facts are sound and haven’t been altered, legitimacy shouldn’t be questioned simply because it can be understood by a larger audience. I hesitate to be one to rail against complexity, but, frankly, it is more difficult to write for the masses, as it were, and to have the work be universally understood and enjoyed, than it is to write for your peers, especially between those with dueling PhDs. And when I’m feeling particularly prickly, I’ll argue that this is one of the things scientists don't appreciate, and why they are so hard on their “popular” peers. I think there exists a fear that their work is somehow made less important because it can be simplified and understood, when in fact, just the opposite is true. There are multiple issues to take into account when writing outside your peer group. In addition to having to simplify language and terminologies, without changing meaning or factual data (difficult enough, surely), the hardest part as far as communicating your ideas is, you are writing blindly and can no longer assume the level of knowledge of your reader. Your words must be accessible to a much greater range without being boring or condescending to either the higher or lower levels of comprehension. That something can be understood and expressed across such a broad range, only enhances its importance. These are ideas relevant to existence, and that’s why they translate to all manner of us. And yes, that is art, in its purest form, as far as I'm concerned.

Part Two, hopefully tomorrow …