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.

John Woodcock

"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!

Suzan Rood Wilson

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.

Suzan Rood Wilson

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!

John Woodcock

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

Tanya Hurst

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.

Asemic writing is writing without semantic content, that is, as the Greek word says, “without the smallest unit of meaning.” Like abstract painting, asemic writing is abstract, and any “meaning” is generated within the subjective field of the viewer. Asemic authors create myriad forms of writing that are deliberately empty of meaning, attempting to produce a “vacuum” of meaning that is then filled in by the viewer. 

Why would an “author” do that? (see note below).

Asemic writing finds its home in literature, but it also finds itself considered an art form. Across various other categories of expression, it has become a global movement. It is a major question when producing an asemic work whether it is possible to create a work devoid of meaning. While the author’s intent is “no meaning,” the viewer's experience?particularly if something of the deeper psyche is triggered, will inevitably begin to fill the vacuum  and this will be experienced as “meaning.” The asemic work is “created” as an art form, while the subjective response is “created” also. Is the subjective response (particularly if outside the conscious ego’s intention) also an art form? 

It was this question I went to sleep with. In the morning, I woke out of the mist of sleep with the question:  Are dreams asemic? 

I’ll respond to this question in a later post. First, I must post a piece on how my mind recently has been taken up with the idea of favorites. I will do that shortly and try to articulate the relationship between “favorites” and asemic writing/art.

 NOTE: A useful exposure to the forms, history, and current developments in asemic writing is available in Wikipedia under the title, “asemic writing.” 

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Synchronic Coalescence

While working on an essay about dream words, an unbidden phrase comes into my experience: synchronic coalescence. Like imageless voice dreams, I take such experiences as the voice of someething other and as something “different” from my conscious intentions. I take them as tasks.
So, if I welcome this intrusion, what do I make of it? I do not think “synchronicity” is meant. That would be the going together in time of an inner psychic event (such as a dream) and an outer event that constitute an acausal “unit.” No need for another word for this. Intuitively, I think what is being referred to is the going together in time of events on the same level. For example, this past Sunday, the news was dominated by the Super Bowl, Tayloe Swift, Money (Super Bowl ad revenue) and Trump. These things “go together” in a unit of time (a kairos)—in this case, a “day.” These are all “outer” events, not the relation between an inner psychic event and an outer event. Inner events may also exhibit synchronic coalescence, e.g., a series of dreams, or visions, or image, over a period (kairos) of any defined length.
The question is: are these synchronic coalescences meaningful in any way?
The term coalescence has many exemplar meanings in different contexts, but all referring in some way to an active process of things being “pulled together.” For example, in chemistry, coalescence refers to “the process by which two or more separate masses of miscible substances seem to ‘pull’ each other together should they make the slightest contact.” (Wikipedia). Wikipedia also refers to “mind coalescence” which refers to “collective intelligence.”
As I work on this, I will post on how synchronic coalescence adds a useful dimension to the analysis of important inner and outer phenomena. In the meantime, see what you can do with this idea.

PREFICTION

A deep stentorian dream voice says but one word: “Prefiction.”

When I type the word into my computer dream book, autocorrect changes the word to “prediction.” When I Google the word, everything comes up “prediction.” Even when I first repeat the word, “prediction” comes forth. It is as if there is vail keeping me from dealing with “prefiction.”

It is my practice to take what imageless dream voices say as tasks. Almost all my writing in books, articles, essays, blog posts and other forms, has taken form from what develops from this sense of task.

So, prediction becomes a task.

As my work with this develops, I will post the results.

An extraordinary book. I highly recommend it. Highly!

A new AI model called Morpheus-1 claims to induce lucid dreaming.

Prophetic, a neurotechnology startup, has a new AI model called Morpheus-1 that it claims can help people enter a lucid dream state. The model takes the current brain state as a prompt and generates ultrasound holograms that can be sent to the brain to start the lucid dream state and keep it stable. Lucid dreaming is a type of dream state where the dreamer is aware they are asleep and can control the dream. Prophetic plans to release a headband product called The Halo in beta in the Spring. The device sends sound waves into the brain to connect with the current brain state and put the mind into a lucid state.

White Rabbit

Looking back, I feel that my favorite song from the late 60s, was Grace Slick’s White Rabbit. Slick was considered the progenitive Queen of Acid Rock and the song has always been considered an anthem to LSD and other hallucinogens. The song caught me not because of its allusions to drugs, I was not a user, but by its connection with the novels of Lewis Carroll (among my favorites) and the “beat” of the song so strongly influenced by Ravel’s Bolero (one of my favorites).* This combination of favorites has persisted now for more the 50 years.

What links these favorites?

Curiously, it was Grace Slick who made it clear. She said the song was not about drugs, but about curiosity. For her, drugs were about opening the mind, but it was curiosity that was the gold. Drugs worked to break down the miasma of conformity that kept everyone trapped in uniformity. But it was curiosity that would truly open the mind and lead to a new kind of freedom, true discovery, and the release of the imagination from its culturally induced prison.  It was not just drugs that would do this. As she made clear, “to feed your head,” meant to read books, particularly books that would lead one to follow the white rabbit, that is, to follow curiosity.

One of my earliest lectures as a Jungian analyst, was built on this essential key of curiosity as a way into the deep psyche. I invite you to be curious about this word curiosity and explore it as I have suggested in recent posts on wordwork.

*Slick also mentioned the influence of Miles Davis’s 1960 jazz album, “Sketches of Spain,” and especially the “Concerto de Aranjuez.” I was never a jazz fan, though I loved reading the history of jazz. To this day, this album and his 1959 “A Kind of Blue,” are the only jazz music I listen to. So, another kind of favorite.

Here  is an important article from the NY Times:

W O R D W O R K

Wordwork is a method of revealing the deep psyche hidden in words and images. From time to time, I’ll post an example to illustrate how to make use of this method. For more details, consult my paper, “Words as Eggs,” in my book, Words as Eggs: Psyche in Language and Clinic.

consider

The first step is to find the word in the dictionary. For wordwork, I suggest The American Heritage Dictionary. Here is what you will find:

con?sid?er (k?n-sid’?r) v. -ered, -er?ing, -ers—tr. 1. To think carefully about. 2. To think or deem to be, regard as. See Usage Note at as¹. 3. To form an opinion about; judge: considers waste to be criminal. 4. To take into account; bear in mind. 5. To show consideration for; considered the feelings of others. 6. To esteem; regard. 7. To look at thoughtfully. — intr. To think carefully; reflect. [ME consideren < OFr. < Lat. considerare : com-, com + s?dus, s?der-, star.]

The initial entry will show the word in bold and separated into syllables. Here you can see that “consider” is a three-syllable word. Next comes the phonetic spelling showing how the word is pronounced. Then the part of speech is indicated; in this case, consider is a verb. There follow different grammatical forms of consider. The entry then tells us this is a transitive verb, meaning that it requires an object to be acted on, to make sense. Then there will be a number of entries showing what the word means. Most dictionaries will list these meanings historically (with current-meaning first) or in terms of commonality (the most common-meaning first). If the verb can also be used intransitively (as a stand-alone word not requiring an object to make sense), this will be indicated.

So far, while some of this may be useful in various ways, none of it has any impact emotionally, psychologically, or imaginatively. All necessary, of course, and not to be ignored, but essentially utilitarian and rather boring.

But now something interesting begins to happen as the dictionary shows us the origin and history of the word. We rarely think about the origin of a word, but every word in every language was born at some point in time and somewhere in the world. And every word that has been born has a history, a story to tell. This birth and story of a word is referred to generally as a word’s etymology. You will recognize the “-logy” of this word, which means “speech.” The component “etym-, refers to “truth.” So, etymology literally means “truth speaking.” Notice that the dictionary “brackets” the etymology. It’s the last entry. Some dictionaries omit this altogether. But this is where the gold is.

Current meaning and definition are too often only the shell of a word. We use words but do not know their soul—or even care; we are all word abusers. Anything that will help free us from the prison of current meaning, the literalness and speed of the present, will help us to free Psyche from her prison shell. Words take on life, induce images, excite the imagination, begin to weave textures with one another, and tell whole stories, if we but scratch the surface of the word.

The sider part of this word is the root-word for star—the same etymon we see in such words as sidereal, meaning “in reference to star time,” and siderite, the iron from meteorites—that is, “what falls to earth from the stars.” In earlier times, a sidus was one who observed the stars. That required care and time—one could not hurry the heavens. And in watching the stars in this slow and attentive way, the psyche was stirred, began to move, and projected itself into the starry lights. In such careful looking, the psyche began to see itself, and man perceived the relationship between himself and the stars. In such con-sideration, being with the stars, the psyche gave birth to astrology.

In these days of instant, this sense of “consider” has been lost.

So, paying attention to the word’s birth and its developmental history is one effective waay of slowing down. And by slowing down, we become psychically prepared to experience the “shock” of what is revealed, that what is hidden in the birth and history of “consider” is the image of “star.” Now this revelation can set the imagination in motion.

Even more. Sometimes, the dictionary will follow the origin-story further back, to the primitive Indo-European roots. In this case, the I-E root for “consider” is sweide¹. This root means “to shine,” and “to consult the stars.” A further development is the word “desiderate,” which originally meant “to hope from the stars,” but in modern time has given rise to our word for “desire.” Neither of these images (star, desire) is available to us unless we do this sort of word work.

In future posts, I’ll illustrate more fully how wordwork can lead one into unexpected places in working on a dream. In the meantime, keep in mind what Emerson said: “Every word was once a poem.”