Virginia Woolf at age 20 Inspired by a reading of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, Joshua Rothman, writing for The New Yorker, offers some rather enchanting reflections on a profoundly important meaning of privacy that cuts much deeper than the word’s contemporary framing in purely political terms: These days, when we use the word “privacy,” it…
Tag: daemonic creativity
Interview with novelist T. M. Wright: Creativity, the muse, and finding your writer’s voice
When I took down the Demon Muse site in 2012, this did away with the couple of interviews that I had conducted for the site. A few weeks ago I republished the one with John Langan here. Now the circle is complete, because here’s the resurrection of my interview/conversation with T. M. Wright: An Unleashed…
The perils of literary shamanism and the gothic horror of ‘Melmoth’
In a fascinating article from 2008 at The Daily Grail, Aeolas Kephas (a.k.a. Jason Horsely) reflects at some length on the roles of Whitley Strieber and Carlos Castaneda as literary shamans whose dedication to sharing their paranormal experiences, encounters, visions, and insights brought them much trouble: Both Castaneda and Strieber were apparently singled out by…
Teeming Links – April 25, 2014
We’re entering an age of energy impoverishment. Richard Heinberg explains: “Itâs hard to overstate just how serious a threat our energy crisis is to every aspect of our current way of life. But the problem is hidden from view by oil and natural gas production numbers that look and feel just fine. . . ….
Is the unconscious the door through which the divine speaks?
From an engaging discussion of Julian Jaynes’ bicameral mind theory by writer and philosophy commentator Jules Evans, at his website Philosophy for Life: Iâm particularly interested in the link between voice-hearing, dissociation and creativity, and in the incidence of voice-hearing among creative individuals like novelists Marilynne Robinson (who occasionally hears a voice inspiring her novels),…
Teeming Links – March 21, 2014
Image courtesy of Salvatore Vuono / FreeDigitalPhotos.net Why great artists need solitude: because it “heightens artistic receptivity in a way that can be challenging and painful.” The Obama administration aggressively prosecutes leakers. It electronically spies on those who might speak to journalists. It deploys its own counter-media to confuse and evade scrutiny by the press….
Entering the fictive dream: The shamanistic, alchemical approach to writing
Andre Dubus III In On Becoming a Novelist â one of my favorite books about writing â John Gardner emphasizes the centrality of the âfictive dream,â the mental-imaginal movie that novelists are tasked with entering as deeply as possible so that they can channel it onto the page and thus recreate it in the imagination of the…
Ray Bradbury: A life of mythic numinosity
Long-time Teeming Brain readers are well aware that Ray Bradbury frequently comes up in conversation here. Like so many other people, and as I detailed three years ago in “The October Mystique: 7 Authors on the Visionary Magic of Ray Bradbury,” I tend to think of him especially when October and the autumn season roll…
The muse, the brain, and Behaviorists vs. Daemonicists: On inspiration and creative writing
Two recent articles focusing on the question of the creative muse and its real or imaginary nature crossed my radar recently. Oddly, they appeared within two days of each other The first appears at Pacific Standard and comes from the pen of independent journalist Brandon Sneed. Its title gets right to the point: “The Muse:…
‘A Course in Demonic Creativity: A Writer’s Guide to the Inner Genius’ (Free ebook)
A COURSE IN DEMONIC CREATIVITY is a writer’s guide to working with the muse, daimon, or genius — the inner “other” that feels like a separate, autonomous intelligence.