[EDITOR’S NOTE: For a kind of companion piece to this one, see Ryan’s “Have a Very Scary Christmas!” over at Dreamstudies.org.] This Christmas Eve as you lay the children down to sleep and lock the doors, you will have the chance once again to notice that feeling of holiday vulnerability creeping on up. You may…
Welcome to the Teem: Ryan Hurd
We’re extremely pleased to announce the addition of Ryan Hurd to our writing teem. He will contribute a recurring column titled “Visions, Dreams, and Visitations.” As indicated by such a title, Ryan is an expert on dreams and consciousness. He is founder of DreamStudies.org, a website dedicated to sleep, dreams, and consciousness research. He is…
Alan Moore: “Writing is a very focused form of meditation”
From an excellent new profile of Alan Moore in The Observer, focusing mainly on his rejection of Hollywood but spinning out into various and sundry areas of deep fascinatingness (as befitting his fascinatingly deep and varied person), a statement regarding the deep intertwinement of magic, consciousness, creativity, and writing: This business of being a practising…
Zombie horror and global revolution
During the present lead-up to the release of the widely anticipated World War Z movie in June 2013, and amidst the ongoing waves of political and socioeconomic unrest convulsing the real world, there’s much to think about, meditate on, and be thoroughly shaken by in this blog post from anthropologist GastĂłn Gordillo of the University…
My Own Personal Tesseract: Reflections on ‘A Wrinkle in Time’
Although my work as an author has been overwhelmingly centered in realms of darkness and horror, as cross-fertilized by my deep and personal focus on matters of religion, philosophy, and psychology, I have also been a lifelong lover of fantasy and science fiction. So perhaps it’s not surprising that one of the foundational books…
Books, solitude, and finding your own reality amid a cultural cacophony
From a lecture titled “Solitude and Leadership,” which William Deresiewicz delivered to the plebe class at the United States Military Academy at West Point in October 2009: Thinking for yourself means finding yourself, finding your own reality. Hereâs the other problem with Facebook and Twitter and even The New York Times. When you expose yourself…
Alfred Hitchcock and the domination of screen culture
Is it possible that the ghost of Alfred Hitchcock presides universally over our current and future image-based culture of screen obsession? The late and legendary director is currently getting a lot of attention. HBO recently aired the original movie The Girl, about Hitchcock’s relationship with Tippi Hedren. The biographical movie Hitchcock, with Anthony Hopkins heavily…
Literature makes you weird. Its gift is the uncanny.
In a previous Teeming Brain post (one that has received a steady inflow of visitors ever since I first published it in 2009), I talked about the magical/alchemical power of language in general and poetic language in particular: [T]here’s a positively magical power in language, particularly in the poetic use of it, since language enables…
Tom Morello on creative calling, conviction, and inspiration
Last May, Bill Moyers interviewed guitarist extraordinaire Tom Morello on Moyers & Company, and in addition to providing the expected barrage of radical and impassioned political brilliance, Morello said a few things in passing that show him to be a musical artist who is gripped by a powerful sense of calling in the deep sense…
Benjamin Britten: “Many of the great things in the world have come from the outsider”
The most influential composer ever to draw English breath, Benjamin Britten did more for music in three active decades than all of London’s musicians in three centuries. … “So many of the great things in the world have come from the outsider,” he reflected, “and that lone dog isn’t always attractive.” Like J.K. Rowling (and…