so, peter watts is this very interesting SF author, he wrote blindsight which occupies a special place in my heart because of its sheer fucking weirdness (in a good way, would recommend)
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i came across a blog post of his, i won't be able to remember which one, but basically it's him coming across an interesting scientific study and immediately spinning out a few story ideas from it
and i realized, oh, this man is constantly searching for possible story ideas
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in the subsequent weeks i tried kinda just asking my mind to do the same thing, "hey could you keep a lookout for stuff that would make for cool stories?" and it kind of just of started working
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i don't remember if any of the ideas were good, i don't think i kept or used any of them, but this is still something i turn on every once in awhile and get a few ideas from. i had 6 or so written down recently, one of which became this
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ABYSS. i heard that isn't even his real last name. GATES. i heard he doesn't really have a wife she's just a cover story. BONES. i heard there's one person every day who gets a different word from everyone else. BLOOD. no one knows what happens if they don't get it right
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this is one of the ways i'm learning about intention-setting. you really can just kind of make wishes i guess??? i've done a similar thing with running a poetry process in the background although i haven't used that one in awhile. also a rap process 😅
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anyway would be v curious to hear about other people's experiences along these lines. have you guys just asked your mind to generate ideas for something and it just started working? did you need to "prime the pump" in some way first?
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oh this of course relates back to our boi
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focus your time and energy on what you want to see more of
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this post where peter watts describes meeting is as good an example of the "always looking for a story" thing as any: "Of course! You’re not going to get this kind of tech without a whole shitload of people deciding to mindmeld with cats!"
rifters.com/crawl/?p=4236
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I've always had to prime the pump, but I feel like that's common. Maybe you need to prime less the more of a mental reservoir you've built up though
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Actually, slightly tangentially, this makes me realize I've never felt more creative than when I was immersing myself in others' work. There's so much to asking "what if they did this differently?" or "that's good, I'd try it like this" or "why did they do this this way?" etc.
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initial ideas for a piece of music come unbidden, or as a synthesis of things i've been exposed to recently. otoh i've made an outline for the piano trio i'm struggling with rn, and this top-down approach is much harder to implement
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oh the thrill of starting a new project!..
oh the joy of ideas occurring to you when you’re about to fall asleep, so you’re compelled to grab your phone and jot them down before they escape you!..
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ha yeah very rarely i get music too! but it's very vague and i never do anything with it so it dies. i could imagine feeding the little music daemon and that could be fun
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Priming the pump would be learning how to enter a meditative state of mind which I’ve learned is known as alpha brain waves. as opposed to beta where most of us operate in most of our day to day. Alpha and theta brain states = the windows to higher intelligence