ADDED: The unconscious was once "fashionable," but it's rare these days — isn't it? — to hear anyone talk about the unconscious. And yet, in some ways, we're inclined to give priority to our dreams.
March 24, 2022
"The surrealists, that group of Paris-based painters and writers who reached deep into the newly fashionable unconscious for inspiration..."
"... were eager to claim the most famous artist of the day for themselves. The figurative but distorted forms that Picasso was producing resonated powerfully with the dreamscapes that paid-up surrealists such as Salvador Dalí and André Breton were producing. While Picasso was not generally a joiner, he agreed to design the cover for the first issue of Minotaure, the influential magazine of the movement that was launched in 1933. The mythical figure of the minotaur – part-man, part-bull – functioned more personally as an alter ego for Picasso, representing all his lasciviousness, guilt and despair."
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Looks like a Picasso self portrait.
"The unconscious was once "fashionable," but it's rare these days — isn't it? — to hear anyone talk about the unconscious". A definitional idea I came up with to use talking about how we make music - all the parts of which aren't "conscious" - is to use the word "non-conscious". It doesn't have the baggage ":unconscious" brings with it.
I like some surrealist paintings (and the poetry even more) but I don’t think any of them come close to achieving the kind of nightmarish hilarity the Fleischer Brothers were pulling off in their Betty Boop cartoons. And there’s nothing in Dali’s whole oeuvre that resonates with me like the scene in “Swiss Miss” where Laurel & Hardy are carrying a piano across a rickety rope bridge high in the Alps and halfway across meet a belligerent gorilla. We’ve all been there.
The surrealists crossed the line in the delicate balance between artistic imagery and intended message, making their work much less interesting to me. Don’t hit me over the head with the intended meaning. I don’t see that as inspired art.
In one of his many digressions, Chuck Klosterman says that we no longer take much interest in dreams. Science, you know. It's supposedly determined that dreams aren't messages from the deep unconscious and aren't particularly significant. Whether that's true or not, there does seem to be much less interest in dreams than there was a half-century ago.
Surrealism seems like it ought to have many connections with mysticism and New Agey ideas, but the dogmatic atheism of the movement may have gotten in the way of deeper connections with "The Beyond." The claims the surrealists made for their work don't seem to me to be satisfied by their actual achievements.
“Unconscious” and “subconscious” and “non-conscious” are pointers toward the ineffable. By definition we don’t use words there. And even calling it “there,” as if it were located in some larger space, as if “location” were relevant to our framing or our grasp of the phenomenon, is misleading. All our words just dance around the edges, and we use them to catch, approximately, whatever comes out of those regions.
I prefer lizard brain to the unconscious.
Tiny Minotaur! Small but perfectly formed, like Picasso himself, or Putin, or Conor McGregor.
Pablo Picasso
Some people try to pick up girls
And get called “asshole”
This never happened to Pablo Picasso
He could walk down your street
And girls could not resist to stare
And so Pablo Picasso was never called an asshole
Well, the girls would turn the color of an avocado
When he would drive down their street
In his El Dorado
He could walk down your street
And girls could not resist to stare
Pablo Picasso never got called an asshole
Not like you
Well he was only five foot three
But girls could not resist to stare
Pablo Picasso never got called an asshole
Not in New York
Show me not, smock me not, obnoxious me not, bell bottom, bummer or asshole
Remember the story of Pablo Picasso
He could walk down your street
And girls could not resist to stare
Pablo Picasso was never called an asshole
Some people try to pick up girls
And get called an asshole
This never happened to Pablo Picasso
He could walk down your street
And girls could not resist to stare
And so Pablo Picasso was never called
Mattie told Hattie 'bout the thing she saw.
Had two big horns and a wooly jaw.
Anyway, oneiromancy is best left to the specialists.
Actually many of those concerned with developing human potential base their efforts on utilizing the power of the unconscious. Such movements as the Law of Attraction and The Secret, and other forms of development such as the Silva Method and hypnosis, are all based on learning how to activate the unconscious. But the more commonly used term is the subconscious mind.
TIL that surrealist painter Salvador Dali had a pet ocelot named Babou. This information makes several scenes from the TV show ARCHER merely meta, and not just absurd.
Sleep Foundation: Dreams
"...While everyone dreams, the content of those dreams and their effect on sleep can vary dramatically from person to person. Even though there’s no simple explanation for the meaning and purpose of dreams, it’s helpful to understand the basics of dreams, the potential impact of nightmares, and steps that you can take to sleep better with sweet dreams.
What Are Dreams?
Dreams are images, thoughts, or feelings that occur during sleep. Visual imagery is the most common1, but dreams can involve all of the senses. Some people dream in color while others dream in black and white2, and people who are blind tend to have more dream components related to sound, taste, and smell3.
Studies have revealed diverse types of dream content, but some typical characteristics of dreaming include:
It has a first-person perspective.
It is involuntary.
The content may be illogical or even incoherent.
The content includes other people who interact with the dreamer and one another.
It provokes strong emotions.
Elements of waking life are incorporated into content.
Although these features are not universal, they are found at least to some extent in most normal dreams.
Why Do We Dream?
Debate continues among sleep experts4 about why we dream. Different theories5 about the purpose of dreaming6 include:
Building memory: Dreaming has been associated with consolidation of memory, which suggests that dreaming may serve an important cognitive function of strengthening memory and informational recall.
Processing emotion: The ability to engage with and rehearse feelings in different imagined contexts may be part of the brain’s method for managing emotions.
Mental housekeeping: Periods of dreaming could be the brain’s way of “straightening up,” clearing away partial, erroneous, or unnecessary information.
Instant replay: Dream content may be a form of distorted instant replay in which recent events are reviewed and analyzed.
Incidental brain activity: This view holds that dreaming is just a by-product of sleep that has no essential purpose or meaning.
Experts in the fields of neuroscience and psychology continue to conduct experiments to discover what is happening in the brain during sleep, but even with ongoing research, it may be impossible to conclusively prove any theory for why we dream.
When Do We Dream?
On average, most people dream for around two hours per night. Dreaming can happen7 during any stage of sleep, but dreams are the most prolific and intense during the rapid eye movement (REM) stage.
During the REM sleep stage, brain activity ramps up considerably compared to the non-REM stages, which helps explain the distinct types of dreaming8 during these stages. Dreams during REM sleep are typically more vivid, fantastical, and/or bizarre even though they may involve elements of waking life. By contrast, non-REM dreams tend to involve more coherent content that involves thoughts or memories grounded to a specific time and place.
REM sleep is not distributed evenly through the night. The majority of REM sleep happens during the second half of a normal sleep period, which means that dreaming tends to be concentrated in the hours before waking up."
https://www.sleepfoundation.org/dreams#:~:text=During%20the%20REM%20sleep%20stage,involve%20elements%20of%20waking%20life.
It's a double edged sword. Brainwashing and social media addiction is based on the stimulus of lizard brain chemistry.
Blogger Rosalyn C. said...
Actually many of those concerned with developing human potential base their efforts on utilizing the power of the unconscious.
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