Comments on Ral’s Post on Asemic Writing
COMMENTS ON RAL’s “What is the Value of Asemic Writing”
Paco Mitchell
Russ, What a fascinating question: Whether dreams are asemic or not? How about both? Yes and
no? Looking forward to reading what you come up with.
Meanwhile, I am wondering whether there may be an asemic assumption “built in” to the
prejudicial idea that only humans can write. I don’t KNOW that for a fact, but as I mull over
your post, I am reminded of one of several powerful HERON DREAMS I had over the years.
I want to tell that dream here, in case it will give us more to speculate on the question of
“animal speech.” I have long since thought that animals, especially birds and mammals, have
languages. This dream dates from at least half a century ago:
SPEECH OF THE SWALLOWS DREAM
I see two swallows sitting on the “telephone” wires running into my Blue Heron Foundry
building. [In actuality, at the time of the dream in the late 1970s or early 1980s, there were
two telephone cables running into the foundry building.] The swallows are chattering away,
the way swallows do. I realize that I can understand the speech of the swallows. I know what
they are saying. Furthermore, I can see the swallow-words spelled out in high relief. The
birds have their own archaic vocabulary. It corresponds to no human alphabet. What amazes
me is that the speech of the swallows is rendered in a never-before-seen alphabet, each letter
carved out of solid blocks of hard stone, like basalt. The “letters” are all about 30ft. to 40 ft.
high. It is an ancient alphabet that far pre-dates the earliest human alphabets (like
cuneiform, hieroglyphics, Hebrew, etc.)
I am stunned to realize that I can understand what the swallows are saying, in English
translation. I can also see, in the dream, the graphic representation of the “swallows’
alphabet.” I realize that I can understand both the “stone-carved original letters” and the
English translations thereof. As I begin approaching the waking state, I try to decide which
image I will carry into consciousness with me. When I wake up, I can no longer remember or
visualize what the 40-ft. stone letters are, nor can I remember the English translation. [End of
dream.]
The implicit idea in that dream was clear: Swallows—and therefore other birds and
animals—have their own forms of speech, which apparently involves having their own
“alphabets.” Would it be, perhaps, an “asemic alphabet”?
Did the tiny swallows themselves—Masters of Graceful Flight and Beauty, sacred to the
ancient love-goddess Aphrodite—carve the monstrous-sized letters in stone? If not, then just
who did carve them? I admit, I have no trouble at all assigning formidable powers to those
sacred birds. But the sheer size of the letters, and the obdurate material of their realization, set
me back on my heels in amazement.
"Are dreams asemic?" Such an amazing provocative question, Russ. Has it ever been asked before? I am thinking that this question, given by psyche, is quite different from the neurobiological stance today that dream are meaningless. This dominant stance simply leads us away from dreams and towards our collective fate. But psyche posing the question draws us deeper into the nature of dreams. Much to ponder, thanks!
As analysts, we have to take each and every dream as asemic. As Jung said, we do not know what a dream means. But the dream itself seems to find its way to meaning. We should not, as helpers, ascribe meaning to it. The dream has a way of creating meaning. We must notice, we must do our best to see the untying of the massa confusa. This is totally anathema to AI, incidentally. “Analyzing” a dream has gotten away from its original meaning. “Analysis” comes from the Greek prefix “ana-“ which comes from the notion of “against” or “un” as in the idea of doing the opposite of what the next part of the entire word implies. The etymology of the last part of the word “analysis” is “-lysis.” Its root comes from the words related to “tying up” or “bringing together,” as in an elision, a liaison, a ligament. So an “analysis”has to do with pulling apart what has been tied together. As when a complex balls up the messy neuroses that shows up in dream imagery.
It is only the feeling that there is an inherent meaning already, brought in the dream as an asemic display. The meaning finds itself. There is an accompanying feeling that attends asemic dreaming. It is that sudden knowledge that there IS a meaning and that when it is untied, the mass of threads, opened just enough to see the components that give what seems like nonsense, a deep feeling sense.
I just woke up to a dream or the first thought or the words that spring into consciousness right out of sleep.
It was this verbatim: “Artificial Intelligence has no possible way of enduring Negative Capability.” Those were the words.
AI’s sole purpose is either to find or to inject meaning non-organically into a given situation. So dreams MUST be interpreted logically in AI. Asemia must never exist there because it cannot be explained and tolerated. AI has no ability to “wait” withOUT explanation, without “making meaning” immediately, or as the 19th century poet, Keats knew so young and so well, “without any irritable reading after fact and reason.” What does AI know what the psyche wants to mean? Nope. We must be in WuWei, the Asian concept of “waiting” for the meaning, in the conscious tension of being at home in opposing forces. In Negative Capability. If you have not yet caught on, this was what Jung first understood what alchemy was. The ability to be in the unknown, to observe, to wait, for what the psyche wants, not what the intellect wants post haste, and for the psyche to be the active motive in observing the transcending and uniting experience that arises without my mind, without my intellect, and to submit to the answer my Unconscious wants. We must have patience. We must be pregnant with this tension to begin to move into a new “matrix,” a word that derives from”mother” “matter” and “womb.” To be born absolutely organically from tension to a NEW matrix. Always a new womb from which we must constantly be born from and into yet another matrix. This is how we learn. We get curious. We are, as Jung said in the Mysterium, “compelled” to know new things. Either by a “mere interest or by compulsion proper.” Check my quote. I just woke up, lying in bed and allowing my thoughts to chop logic, NOT to know.
It is not a simple task to let ideas live semi-consciously inside you. The unconscious has to prepare you for that Transcendent. Not a Hegelian “synthesis.” Not at all. It is state of the Tertium Non Datur, the Third or Transcendent not yet in existence. Not quite yet. It is the promise of some new position or understanding that is coming and quickening.
THIS is what defies AI. Asemia chops logic (with apologies to William James here). To be human often requires having no explanation or good answers. Or some meaning served up like the world’s fastest food, just to stave off the hunger of anxiety and of needing an answer fast. Now.
AI cannot tolerate the process of waiting for meaning. Asemic writing is in the right direction of allowing the unconscious to move according to its own purpose. And we cannot know that before we DO know that.
Today is the 63rd memorial of Jung’s death. Imagine, because you CAN, what Jung would have thought of this predigested meal, served up by AI. He would not very likely stand for it. And here we are, on the 63rd memorial of his death, grappling still with the questions Jung also grappled with, night after night, for years, being dragged by his ears into Asemia.
We must go slowly. Bring out the pen, the paper, the stamps. Snail Mail a thought. You will have to wait days, not nanoseconds, for the impact of your thoughts on another human being. Somebody please proofread this! I need a biobreak!
Depth psychology treats dreams, just as you say, Suzan, as being inherently meaningful (there is an inherent meaning already...). This inherent meaning has to be teased out (analysis) again as you say, and, yes we are not to ascribe meaning to dreams. What appears to be nonsense holds (hidden at first) meaning. But the concept of asemic is pointing to something radically different from all this, I think. There is no meaning to be (eventually) found or discovered. I don't believe it is a matter of dreams being inherent meaning "brought to an asemic display" so that it can "find itself", as you suggest above. If dreams are asemic, we probably have to drop current ideas of meaning, finding meaning, dreams as meaning, unconscious meaning etc. This what I find exciting! In my musings subsequent to Russ' post, I thought of Barnett Newman's "Zip" paintings along with Heidegger's "Contributions to Philosophy" which is his version of The Red Book, an almost crazy book. "Inception" comes to mind. There is huge interest at this time in how meaning itself comes to be! Not comes to be discovered but comes to be. "Spitting fissure" comes to mind. So this concept is very psychoactive for me in the light of my work on "the threshold", ie where the asemic action is... All the best, John
I was thinking about asemic writing, and I realized that some of my poetry (used loosely) really grabs images, and words, sometimes from songs, and puts them together, and they truly have no “meaning.” Though I might begin with a meaning in mind, when I let go of ego control of the outcome, something else comes about. What grabbed me just now in reading about asemic dreams, and thinking about those poems, is that while there is no “meaning,” there is no meaning needed. A “feeling,” is evoked. In this way it seems, though I may not find meaning, there is a feeling and the feeling seems to “know” and perhaps not “solve,” but relieve, express, or present something other that what the words themselves would define. My poems seem meaningless to me still, yet I can recall the writing and experience something being worked within me, and so I am fond of and thankful for them. I’ve only ever read two poems aloud to others on one occasion, and the reading evoked feelings in the listeners. Perhaps the listener might imagine a meaning but can never be truly certain. No resolution through meaning, yet something if not resolved, is moved. So too with my dreams. I can attempt to find meaning, but often the dream evokes deep emotion without the need of meaning, and seems to be communing with something within myself that even I do not know, but that I experience.