Follow your inner moonlight
Spontaneous Writing {Letter Two: Secrets & Stars}
Follow your inner moonlight; don’t hide the madness.
You say what you want to say when you don’t care who’s listening.”
― Allen Ginsberg
Creative Interiority
There’s something about this turning point into winter that keeps bringing me back to this line from Allen Ginsberg: follow your inner moonlight; don’t hide the madness. There is almost nothing I want more this winter than to follow my inner moonlight and to be a little more brazen about my strangeness.
But in order to access that space, I need a lot of alone time. And when I say “alone,” I really mean it. I need the whole house empty of other humans (animals are fine) in order to really get into the flow of my creative life.
As most writers and artists know, creativity doesn’t always look like much from the outside. I need to be able to putter up and down the stairs, make a cup of coffee, look out the window, wander into the backyard, and then back up to my office where I might actually write or I might spend 45 minutes researching the Beat Movement to remind myself why I was so obsessed with them in my early twenties.
I might make a new Pinterest board or flip through books, I might scroll Instagram for sparks of ideas. I need to look unproductive and be able to stay in my own mind, weaving thoughts together in the background without any interruption.
When I write, even a letter like this one, one I suspect will eventually find its way to a real audience, I write as if no one else will ever read it first. I write exactly what I am thinking without editing or sculpting it in any way. I say what I want to say when I don’t care who’s listening.
The Beat Movement and the idea of “spontaneous writing”
“One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.”
― Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums
Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac were part of the Beat Movement, a loose constellation of writers and artists committed to authenticity over polish, experience over respectability. “First thought, best thought” was how Ginsberg described their approach to spontaneous writing, a method that aimed to bypass the censoring mind and reach something more essential.
The Beats were poetically experimental and politically dissident, emerging in the aftermath of World War II and pushing back against a culture that prized conformity over conscience; a posture that feels uncomfortably relevant again.
After college, I moved to San Francisco with dreams of being this kind of artist; free, experimental, cool. I used to wear black turtle neck sweaters and hang out at City Lights Bookstore. I took black and white photographs of people on the street, I learned to make films on WWII-era cameras and spliced the footage together in a darkroom with film tape.
I dreamt of driving across American and writing the next great novel, a dream that has been coming back to the foreground of my mind lately.
When I first learned that Kerouac supposedly wrote On the Road in a burst of unedited energy, on a single scroll of paper, I was entranced. (I still am.) He believed spontaneous writing could unlock the brilliance hidden inside each of us, if only we could get out of our own way.
This is the kind of authenticity and lack of self-censorship that I aspire to when I’m writing anything, but poetry even more particularly.
When I write poems, I feel as if I am floating in a dark pool of consciousness plucking words as they roll past me, unexpected and surprising even to myself. When I write like this I get a kind of tingly, oceanic rush of pleasant chemicals throughout my body, much like meditation or the feeling of being in love. Perhaps it is oxytocin, the bonding chemical, between me and the Universe of potentiality. I don’t know, but it’s something I seek and only occasionally find.
Community Writing & Activism
Despite needing a ton of alone time for my creative work, I also crave creative community. I think one of the reasons the Beat Movement still holds so much romance for me (despite the obvious white maleness of it all) is that they gathered. They wrote together. They argued. They shared meals and ideas in real life.
I want that, too.
I want to be surrounded by passion, creativity, and values that don’t match what I’m seeing on TV, in politics, or on most social media platforms. I want real, aging faces. Wisdom. Words written from the body not a machine. I want what I see in photographs from a bygone era; community that permeates the boundaries of our individualism, art that creates a change in the world around it.
I also happen to work especially well in groups. There’s something about writing together, using timed exercises & that shared energy, that allows me to move past my own perfectionism and drop into my body. Writing fast becomes a kind of spell; if I go just quickly enough, the interesting images are able to slip through.
This is what I try to cultivate in my workshops (both online and in-person): ways of writing from the deepest interior places, from the body, from interior vision. I’d love for you to join us.
Our next Zoom writing session will be on Jan. 10th at 12-2pm Eastern!
Creative Prompts
As we wind our way toward the end of the year, I want to invite you into your subterranean selves, your dream selves, your unconscious ramblings, and your cave of longings.
Go into your vault of selves and find one that hasn’t seen the light of day for quite a while and let them tell you a story of who you could be.
Ask this question:
What did I once dream of becoming, that I’m ready to listen to again?
Then, gather images that speak to the you that you’ve almost forgotten. The one that still lives deep underground.
Write something in their voice. A poem. A short story. A rambling tale you couldn’t have dreamt up with your waking mind.
If you feel drawn, read through Kerouac’s beliefs and techniques for modern prose. Let them lead you down a strange staircase into yourself. Keep a secret notebook. Be in love with your life.
Remember: you’re a genius forever.
I’d love to know what you think of spontaneous writing. I’ve found it is a method that works for some and not for others. Have you tried it? Have you ever written in a group? I’d love to hear what you think!
with joy and flow,
Alix
Oh I relate so much to this post! The alone-time-in-the house part—particularly in my circumstances— is rare and thus more precious. When it comes I do it too— the puttering, the looking something up, doodling, maybe writing. It’s all part of it.
Thank you for this. Let’s embrace all the weirdness!
You have probably explored the works of Diana Diprima and Ann Waldman. The two women beats up that famous group that history, of course, tends to leave out; if you haven’t now would be a good time. Thanks for a brilliant article.