Surrealism | Send Me To Sleep

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Are the words at the bottom of a very famous surrealist piece of art by the artist Rene Magritte. And you've probably seen it before and even if you don't quite know the artist or the relevance, you probably would recognize this image of a smoking pipe, a wooden smoking pipe, made of brown wood with a black spout against a white background and the French writing along the bottom, c'est ciné paum pip. Which I am very much making a crude interpretation of as not even remotely any kind of French speaker, but English, this phrase means this is not a pipe. And this is an image I think I first saw in my youth and have been familiar with just through the absorption of culture. You know how these things just sort of seem to crop up as you go about your daily lives. Though until recently, perhaps in the last few years of my life, I've never really understood the relevance of this image or at least what it is that Magritte was trying to convey the meaning he was trying to give by having this piece of art and saying those precise words, this is not a pipe. And ultimately the thing he was trying to get across was that what we see in the image very much appears to be a pipe. It is quite a realistic depiction of a old wooden smoking pipe. But he's trying to remind us that sometimes when we're engaging with art or any representation of reality, that we can sometimes convolute what we're looking at with reality itself. And so this piece of artwork exists to remind us that the art itself is not reality. What we're looking at is not a pipe. It is someone's interpretation of the image of a smoking pipe, that they have crafted in some detail so as to evoke the impression of a pipe. But it is in fact not at all a real pipe, which seems like an obvious thing to say, but like I say, it's something that we often convolute in our minds. We can be so invested in certain kinds of art that we begin to believe that the art is real, that it exists. But it is in fact just lines on a page, strokes of a brush, drawings of a pen, or printed letters on a piece of paper. And this is something that we should remember when we're engaging with art. I think I was especially culprit of becoming too invested in art or types of media, especially when I was much younger. And I think that's largely one of the reasons why I didn't engage with the surreal very much until I was much older and thinking about it now. Perhaps more artistic, more in touch with my own creative side. That was when I could truly begin to appreciate the surreal. But when I was younger, I didn't, I was scared of it. I remember vividly clutching onto my dad when we were sat on the sofa watching, honestly, I can't quite remember particularly what it was we were watching. Although if I try and strain my memory, I think it might have been something like Tim Burton's work, The Nightmare Before Christmas, or perhaps something like Coraline. Although I think that film came out a little bit later than my childhood, I think I was already growing into adulthood when Coraline came out. Now I'm not sure, but it was some work of this description that made me cling onto my father's side with fear and I'd be closing my eyes tight. And he would be chuckling by my side a little bit at what he considered to be the absurdity of my reaction to these surreal images, but they truly affected me. And I think that's because I was so invested in the media itself, I was taking it as literal as reality, and letting it affect me as if it was something happening to me in the real world. And if you allow surreal things to do that, they can take hold of you in that way, because of course, the whole idea of them is to abstract from reality, is to perhaps tap into that non-linear lateral mind state, what one might describe as the hypnagogic mentation that we all experience in that barrier between sleep and waking that allows us to come up with these very lateral interconnected, though still seemingly very abstract images and ideas that represent something far more profound in their subconscious nature. And that is something really beautiful about surreal art. I think one of the first things people think of when they think of surrealist art is Dali and his famous melting clock. And it is a very striking and profound image, and I'm sure you've seen it before. Perhaps if you're not quite familiar with what I'm talking about, you may have seen other works of his art without even realizing it, but that melting clock dripping over, I'm not entirely sure what it is dripping over, I've forgotten the image precisely in my mind, but it looks something like a droopy fried egg, but is in fact a clock face. And it is set against this sort of barren landscape with these what look like abstract animals in the background, though they have no discernible face or really body parts, it almost looks like a disembodied torso that wanders through a strange desert-like landscape. And there's this odd, serene sheen over the texture of Dali's art that makes it very uncanny to look at almost in the same way, oddly enough, and I think interestingly enough, that AI art appears to us, it has this uncanny, unreal sheen to it, and I'm not entirely sure whether AI has that kind of sheen because it is using examples of art like Dali's and others in order to inform the illustrations that it produces, or whether it is in fact that that is some sort of coincidental texture that comes out naturally from a process of producing art that is intentionally dream-like as Dali is trying to convey in his work, and then the sort of dream-like productions of the neural networks that are produced to produce these pieces of content, these images that AI make, whether there is something dream-like in their construction that makes content or images fall out to the look as though they were created by Dali, I think there is an interesting overlap there, and I would like to know more information about how it is that these things are built and why they look this certain way, but they are certainly the most poignant examples of surrealist art, and honestly I'm not so familiar with surrealist art that I could name many other artists in that respect, but I remember going to Dali's museum when I visited Paris, I think it was probably six years ago now, and that was a beautiful experience because there was not just his paintings, his artistic works in that respect, but also his sculptures, and to see that kind of surrealist work in three dimensions, and to be able to walk around an atmosphere that is drenched in this strange subconscious art style is really quite an inspiring experience, especially if you can allow your mind to just sort of subconsciously absorb this art that you're taking in, rather than trying to interact with it in any kind of literal way, which you might try to do with other kinds of art, if you allow yourself to let your mind drift and let your subconscious take in the content of what you're witnessing, and then attempt perhaps after you have spent some time in this space and looking at these things to reflect after some time of having absorbed it, and I tell you what my dreams that night after having visited the museum were quite striking, they definitely had a really poignant impression upon me, I remember the dreams started as if I were wandering around the museum still, and then slowly I would begin to walk down a staircase that was in fact present in the museum, but as I continued to walk down they seemed to go on and on and the steps that I believe in my memory were made of marble started to transform into sand and water, although not mixed together in some sort of strange texture that flowed in a way that was not like reality, they flowed almost as if they were one thing that combined the way in which water and sand flows, and somehow I was still able to walk upon these steps even though they were no longer anything I could actually put a foothold on, and so slowly as I made my way down this staircase that was not a staircase but slowly forming into what was more like a corkscrewed hill of sand and water in this strange abstract texture, I would then continue walking along the dunes of a desert and a wide open plain where I would see a huge open sky of pale pink with no clouds at all, but as I continue to walk through this abstract space stars would appear in the sky blinking fading in and out of existence but not stars like one would see in this night sky, in reality stars that were more abstract, literal representations of what one would see in their mind's eye as stars, these pentagramic representations that would unvulate and throb in their movement almost as if they had a heartbeat of sorts, a pale pink sky filled with these beating stars, it was very, one might call psychedelic, an experience, and the dream reminds me of a recurring dream that my friend would often tell me about, and I know that this dream was very profound, very informative to him and his life experience because often he would tell me about in the way that sometimes people do repeat themselves, forgetting that they had once told you before or perhaps not even trying to remember whether they had told you before, because you know that this experience was so informative, so formative to their life experience, that it's almost something that they want to tell you again, that they wish to relive, that they want to make points enough that they come back to it time and time again in a way that they wouldn't want to do alone, that they'd want to do in conversation, and this dream that he has is one of himself lying on lush green grass that is long and his back is to the ground and he is facing upwards looking towards a bright blue sky, and all of a sudden this bright blue sky in its entirety that he can see from horizon to horizon all around him, this sky opens up until he can see the shining and vividly detailed pupil of an eye and he begins to realize that the sky itself is not a sky but it is a watching presence and that entire presence is focused down on him and in that moment what is his reality is now just the observation of this huge all-encompassing outside presence and this is the point at which he begins to stir and the dream fades itself out of existence and you can understand listening to this why it is so profound because you can begin to pick apart the subconscious influences that may be gnawing at the inside of him to be producing these images in his dreams, there is an evocative sense of upper higher consciousness in this dream, in this idea that our existence is just the observation of a larger consciousness in this way that we almost wish to feel that we are being observed in that way, we hope that we are not alone in this individual experience that there is some onlooker to our lives and our lived experience and in that way having an onlooker, having someone who almost notates the ongoings of our lives in some way it gives the experience of our lives more credibility as if there is some curator as if the very idea of having an observer to our lives is a way of imbuing it with more meaning, more purpose, more context and that perhaps this observer of our lives is the observer of the lives of everyone and of course when I'm now beginning to talk about it starts to sound as if it is in some way deific as if I'm talking about a god of sorts and for some people this is of course the interpretation they have of these feelings me personally I think there is something not so clear cut not so direct in my feelings of what this might subconsciously represent for those who have had similar experiences or visions in their life and personally I don't think if there is any such higher consciousness that observes us in our day-to-day lives that there is any such clear way as describing it as a god and if one could describe it as a god you wouldn't necessarily say it were this individual that is in the image of humanity a man in the sky if you will I think it is something much more abstract much more non-direct non-dualist one could say much more surreal than that something that could only be understood in abstraction something that could not be described literally and therefore almost has no literal description you could not pin it down in that sense this conversation reminds me very much of the general idea of postmodernism of all the world being a stage of nothing being literal all being contextual all being outside of experience because experience is by its very definition non-literal some of you may already know or be familiar with the idea that there is a delay in our experience of the world so however small it may be microseconds milliseconds between senses picking up on external stimulus and our brain processing that like I say however small that delay may be there is still a delay and as such we never have direct contact with reality and on top of this of course our experience of these senses this qualia that comes into our lives is very much informed and processed and also distorted by the way that our brains operate and so there is another diffusion another layer another filter between us and reality some of you may also be familiar with the idea of the way that our brain fills in patches where we have potential blind spots whether that be our literal blind spot in our vision so there are there are areas that we actually cannot compute as it were vision within our eyes but and and they exist somewhere on the peripheral of our vision but our brain does an excellent job of confabulating things to put in the place of the area of the blind spot in order to make sense of vision in order to not just have a missing and unknown but to blur these things together so as to create the impression of continuous vision but of course this is not reality this is made up this is most imagination and similarly we have these blind spots not just in our literal vision but also in cognition so there's this famous phenomena that you may have experienced yourself looking at a clock that melts down the wall dripping slowly drip drip as the time ticks of course that is me just giving you an example of surrealism through dali's work but what i mean to say actually is looking at a clock on the wall and you could swear that as the tic the second hand ticks away you're in fact seeing a delay where the second happens to last just a little longer than it might have done if you were to stare at the clock continuously almost as if somehow it became frozen in time and this phenomena is another example of our minds putting in these confabulations this made up information to create an impression of continuous time so what is in fact happening is that our eyes scanning over to the clock at a time at which the second hand has only just moved but so quickly in a way as what is our mind was unable to process it so our mind has almost retroactively created this impression where it deletes the fast motion that we were almost unable to perceive and prolongs the image that was first most clear to us when we looked over to the clock not that blurring of the the second hand moving over but the clear image of it standing still and it prolongs in order to create a cohesive continuous streamlined version of reality that makes more sense to our minds but of course has this strange and curious effect of making it seem as if time temporarily just stands still and so in that respect our existence in itself has these elements of the surreal although some of us like to believe that we can root ourselves in reality that there is this realness that we can tap into if only because we become more grounded our very existence the way that we live the way that we ingest stimulus from the world and the way that our brain processes those stimulus means that we are bound we are inevitably going to live alive that is in aspects surreal and the more we embrace this I personally believe the more we will see the truth of reality the more that we can understand that what we see what we hear what we smell what we taste what we feel in this world is of the abstract is non-literal and is simply a representation of what is some other underlying truth of the universe the more we can actually understand the universe and of course this is to talk more mechanically about our minds not even to skirt up against the psychological filters that our lived experience ply over and over like layers of sodden mud and soil and rock like a sedimentary cake of filtered experience that some of us spend our whole lives completely oblivious to as it piles on top of each other and we get to a certain point in adulthood where we have no idea even that we are interpreting the world based on these constructed ideas these I suppose you could say tools that we built in early childhood these psychological tools that were meant to help us understand the world and people and the way that society operates but perhaps are not actually anything that helps us interpret truth or see our own mind more correctly and so of course as more and more of the layers of filters these cognitive filters we apply to our minds build up if we are unaware of them if we begin to see these cognitive filters as reality as opposed to a way in which we are interpreting reality then we get to this position that we are in now in the world where two different people who seemingly have the same kinds of eyes and ears mouth knows sense of touch could presumably see the world in the same way but in fact see the world fundamentally differently and this is purely through the way in which they interpret the world psychologically through the lenses that they have placed in front of their mind to interpret what it is that the nature of reality is and of course this is so easily done I think especially as we grow up it is important in a way that we do these things because to live too abstractly in early life is to become confused I think one must build up a lens through which you see life first in order to be able to even interact with the world and society in its complex ways to build a simplistic understanding of the way the world works in order to move through it is far more helpful in the beginning and then only later in life is it more I think beneficial to begin picking apart being able to look down within those constructed filters and break them down and see them for what they are to try and as it were see the realities of these surrealist non-physical structures that you see within your mind in order to understand the non-literal surrealist nature of reality so as to actually see a deeper truth within yourself so as to open up a door that is previously closed to you and see a world that is not direct that requires interpretation in its abstractness but is closer to a truth than any idealized version of what is solid reality in one's mind which truly cannot actually exist and there are ways of course in which one can help themselves to become in touch with this way of thinking with this way of stripping back these constructed layers of false reality that we build for ourselves and these techniques involve getting more in touch with ones subconscious well for example the idea of automatic writing is a very powerful one and if you're not familiar with that idea what one does is to simply sit with a pen and paper and there is some idea that you might be able to reconstruct this technique with a laptop and a computer tapping away at a keyboard if that is your preferred method of writing though i personally believe that there is something quite a lot more tactile that gets in touch more directly with your mind by using physical objects and putting out your ideas with a pen and a paper i personally feel you have more direct contact with your mind in that sense although you may disagree and whatever your preferred method i would still recommend trying to sit down with this either pen paper or keyboard in front of you and simply begin writing begin trying to put downwards without really putting too much conscious thought into it and you will begin to start writing about whatever the first thing that comes into your mind you may start saying i'm writing on a piece of paper and i don't know why i'm writing i'm simply putting downwards whatever they may be and slowly but surely other things will come out of your subconscious that you weren't quite sure were there before and in a way i could attempt to demonstrate this by doing a version of it that is literally speaking to you so rather than getting in touch with paper and pen actually just speaking out this kind of fluid subconscious like i say surrealist way of being in touch with your mind and so for example if i were to begin to do this i would need to first become more in touch with my subconscious and to do that while speaking is fairly difficult i need to get into a particular brain state where i am truly allowing my mind to inform the words that come from my mouth rather than attempting to think about what i'm saying allow the words to come first and like i say to do that to begin with you do have to just speak more literally about what is happening there is a stage at which you have to be present with what you are saying i have to talk to you about the fact that i am describing words that words are coming from my mouth and that i don't know what i'm saying but i will continue to keep saying them in an aid to keep on the experiment that is getting in touch with the subconscious of my mind but as the words continue to drift and as i continue to not really think too much about what it is that i'm saying and i let images rush over my mind the first of which becomes a bird who sits on a perch and i see the bird vividly because its beak is very cone like and i can even see the shiny texture of it and the detail of its small nose embedded in the beak and there are even grains almost as if of wood and so now the bird becomes something that is made of wood and carved intricately as the worksman the carpenter uses the tool to very gently carve away at this wooden bird that sits upon his desk made of green leather and the texture of this leather begins to undulate and wave and it becomes an ocean an ocean of green leather that crashes into watery waves where i see a ship that sits in a bottle an entire ocean in a bottle and this tiny ship rocks back and forth on the waves as the carpenter holds the bottle in his hands and looks down and cries he cries as he sees this bottle and he does not why until he turns around and he sees the small girl who sits there on the floor with her teddy bear her hair in pigtails wearing a long flowing pale pink dress and she cries as well because she looks down at the floor right next to her and she sees a deep deep hole as of a well and she stares into this hole and as we go down into the hole we rush quickly quickly down and as we begin to rush we slow and slow as if gravity itself is becoming to simmer and calm and around us we are surrounded with things that look like stars at first but they are not they are bioluminescent lights and the things that surround us are as if floating jellyfish that move in all kinds of beautiful colors of the spectrum this now bright ocean of iridescent swimming jellyfish move around us and they continue to move until they brighten this dark abyssal space into an open brightness and we begin to rise through what is the tunnel of iridescent motion as all of these undulating creatures move together to become more of a misty swirl and we rise and we rise up up up into the clouds and we see in front of us a castle in a bright open blue sky and this castle looks as if from a fairy tale and it has blue spires and dark green conicles and a large open doorway through a portcullis that is opening up as we rush towards it and go inside and inside here is what remains of a dream this abstract layered almost open place where there are many many structures that exist and we can move freely between the floors of what is an open courtyard inside here there are many people many creatures in fact there are people conversing with beings that look as if they are from outside of our reality i see a huge almost bearlike creature that puffs up like a marshmallow and has large eyes that once seem cute but also surreal and abstract and there is a person sat down on a marble bench who looks as if they are from times of ancient Greece who is discussing something very fervently with this large puffed out bear like marshmallow creature and this is just in one corner the entire courtyard which is as i say of many layers of many balconies that sort of surround this open central courtyard that is dappled with sunlight coming from above many creatures are swirling some fly through the air some sit on the ground some move in flocks of groups all quite surreal all not quite of this world though very reminiscent of it and darted in amongst these strange creatures sit the people who wish to have discussions with them looking as if they are intently discussing things of an important nature as if they are trying to glean some kind of wisdom from these abstract creatures that exist outside of the boundaries of our reality and as we see it in amongst the atmosphere of this courtyard and we feel the warmth of the sun coming down upon us looking out across these strange but wholesome and curious and inviting conversations this low murmur of joyful chattering we hear around us as we sit in this pleasant and inviting and wholesome space i wish you to continue on through this infinite castle i want you to look upon some of the people who sit here and ask yourself what it is they're talking about lean in closer to see if you can hear some of the words that are passed from this conversation what are the sounds that come from the creatures who respond what words do they say what melodies come from them do they perhaps transform do they devolve do they evolve into different creatures different forms and what representations do they create to respond to the words and what words do the people have in response to these i want you to continue to experience this space as you slowly drift away and continue on this journey that i have began in your mind continue to have this conversation continue to explore what has come from my subconscious and what leads into yours use this space as the overlap between myself and yourself and let my mind allow your mind to drift into further exploration of what is the true reality that exists within your subconscious um You You You You You You You