On 6 Feb 2003 at 10:25, Alexi (Neal Bouffard) wrote:

> > > Aye, that's sort of my intuition too.  I mean, at any given time I
> > > have an Inner Voice (several, really) going, 
> > 
> > It's like someone spinning a radio knob (oh, they have SEEK buttons
> > now, don't they?)... fragments of conversation, most, just beyond
> > hearing, all the time.... then my OWN cacaphony.
> 
> For me it's sort of like there's one 'master' voice and a whole bunch 
> of others of various volumes in the background who can suddenly 
> be "turned up" if they say something interesting.  Or if I'm
tired and 
> lack the ability to focus my attention, in which case then it really is 
> a lot like a random spin in terms of the ability of the other voices to 
> distract me.   I figure, really, if I was tired enough, I would be 
> incapable of completing a single sentence without rushing off 
> tangentally.


Fascinating.  (Not in a Spockian sense, but seriously....) 

For me there's really only the one voice. Call it a one-track mind, 
or one track at a time anyway, but most of what I write here or in my 
journal is almost pure stream-of-consciousness (which is a bitch for 
a journalist) with one main thread going who knows where but with a 
whole boatload of (sometimes useful, sometimes diverting, sometimes a 
waste of time) parenthetical clauses wandering in. 

If there are backgrounders talking, they're on mute or totally 
inaudible and I'm not generally aware they're there.  Later on, of 
course, I'm frequently surprised to read what I wrote and learn what 
I think, but...

So it's intriguing that some of you have multiple voices.  One would 
think it would get crowded in there. 


If I weren't so damn good  with a camera over on the other side of 
the brain, I'd think I should have been a professional writer of some 
non-reportage form, because for a lot of things I really DO just sit 
at a keyboard and think onto the screen.  I may go back and edit or 
revise and Gods know there are tyops to be fixed, but rarely do I 
need or want any major revision.  Structure, sometimes, grafs moved 
or reordered, like that, but usually that's for professional work and 
mostly about parentheticals being brought up to full elements or 
deleted or fitted in in some other externally logical spot  (When's 
the last time you saw a digressive parenthetical in the paper?) or 
sometimes going back and working through a logic leap rather than 
filling it in further down the page, or ...  but it's all one long 
continuous piece.  I've never done rough drafts in the classic sense, 
and writing this aspect then that aspect then something else and then 
restructuring it all... I can do it, when I have to, but it feels 
profoundly unnatural and at the end I don't usually see that there's 
any of "me" in the writing.

This is really a fascinating thing... how do writers' brains work?  I 
mean, I know how photographers' brains work (and contrary to rumor 
they DO 
actually work but it's nonverbal and hence not reduceable to written 
explanation) but this is a different field.

Oddly enough (just hit me when I was writing that)  I think in words, 
a voice... but I dream in images, in color, in experience.  Things 
that, IRL, were 
peripheral... hot, cold, being bloody terrified or elated... become 
front and center and all the reactions work out then.  Lucid dreaming 
isn't 
something I do much but I DO rely on my dreams as sort of a barometer 
of experience and reaction... I'll sometimes work through the same 
scenario three or four or six times, finding myself doing different 
things and dealing with the aftermath. I think it's my subconscious 
mind doing its nightly introspection/housecleaning, or possibly 
working out whether I'll actually be able to react as planned if 
something happens..  (And then there was being chased through the 
streets of Colonial Quito by invisible purple hippopotami in 20 foot 
expedition loaded canoes, but I think that was the Chinese Buffet...)

Cool topic for a rainy morning....
               Albest,

                        Clayton

---
R.Clayton McKee                http://www.rcmckee.com
PhotoJournalist                   rcmckee{at}rcmckee.com   
P O Box 571900                 voice/fax 713/783-3502
Houston, TX 77257-1900        pager 281/510-3588


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