Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.

Underground > Comic Books >

Answers for a weepy minotaur

All Acting Regiment

13:06 / 17.07.03

This guys clever. He has a theory that comic writers are in fact able to view a parralel universe which they then tell to us as a story. Also, he asked whther any drawn images predate speech.

I thought id make this into a whole new thread because there's some interesting ideas here.

I think that yes, the theory may be true, but that it is not neccesarily static. Anyone can visit these parralel universes- you just have to be willing to think yourself there. An example of this would be:

Lord of the rings at cinema- Bob and Bill go see it.

Bob: It was really good. That guy hit the other guy. And the other guy killed that guy.

Bill: What the goblins?

Bob: I dunno. But that guy hit that guy.

Bill: Did you not think that the world of middle earth was really beautiful, and that the creatures there were very pretty, apart from the wyrm and the goblins, they were nasty?

Bob: No.

Here, Bill has allowed himself to go into the paralel universe which tolkein saw, and Bob has not. As far as he is concerned, aragorn is pretty much the same as a tv sportsman.

13:33 / 17.07.03

Any theory about pictoral language predating verbal or even nonverbal communication, unlikely though it sound must remain forever unproven since there are necessarily no records of the first communicative act.

18:22 / 17.07.03

thank you chris. no one's ever reffered to me as "clever". ive'e had "eccentric", "insane", and "what the fuck is wrong with you?", but never "clever". and yes, my theory(if you wanna call it that), allows for anyone to look in on other realities. reality is an entirely subjective thing. there are as many realities as there are sentient beings in the universe/multiverse whatever. what we call "imagination" is just a broadcast for another reality. thats just the signal your brain is tuned into.

and sleazenation, i wasn't stating that comics wre the first communication per se. i was stating that they're probably the first form of information control/exchange that isn't speech.

22:28 / 17.07.03

I could swear that this has been discussed at length on Barbelith before, and if not here, then by Grant Morrison elsewhere, and certainly in Flex Mentallo. Ideas that storytellers/fiction-smiths (mostly unwittingly) tap into alternate modes of reality/possibility and recount it to the masses, or rather that the "fictional world is just as real as the one we know"(for any who haven't heard that a million times), while wonderful for fertilizing the imagination aren't anything new.

Alan Moore's had plenty to say on the subject of this and the history of the picture as written word as story meaning sequential art is the oldest form of communication/storytelling topic in Promethea, and in his Egomania interview with Eddie Campbell, if I'm not mistaken.

22:34 / 17.07.03

Also, the idea that art and/or storytelling are more a matter of 'receiving information' and melding it into our reality than they are of spontaneous creation/individual genesis has been around for about as long as philosophy has.

Jim Morrison was a big proponent of this, that artists are simply conduits for information/ideas from beyond, and that they were best served tuning themselves to be receivers for signals like that. A lot of writers are big fans of this idea without ever really articulating it (the idea that characters have minds of their own, the story tells itself, etc. ).

01:25 / 18.07.03

i didn't know the idea had been around for awhile. i kind of figured, but hadn't really looked into it. thanks, LDones.

01:59 / 18.07.03

There's no reason to thank me. I wasn't attempting to cut off a conversation from occuring because it had happened previously, just giving some frame of reference. A search on the ideas or on certain key words about it might yield some illuminating discussions here (or elsewhere).

Concept exploration should never be discouraged, I hope I didn't give the impression that I was attempting to do so.

09:34 / 18.07.03

Jasper Fforde also uses the concept of writers getting their plots from *elsewhere* quite extensively in his Thursday Next books.

All Acting Regiment

13:15 / 18.07.03

I'm currently working on some kind of vessel for transportation to other people's realities. It would need to be something that could feasbly exist in any reality. To this end i'm using the PAC-MAN, which is about a basic fear of being eaten whilst also eating. Failing that, a phallic symbol of somekind will probably do the trick.

20:29 / 19.07.03

the reason i believe this, by the way, is this. every night as im drifting off to sleep, random streams of words start flowing through my head. like im looking at a computer screen that someone i cant see is typing on. does this, or something similar, happen to anyone else?

21:28 / 19.07.03

Have you tried writing them down? You may find it to be of benefit.

22:14 / 19.07.03

i have in fact written them down several times. often results end up in a cut-up like giberrish. nothing very interesting, or even concrete.

22:31 / 19.07.03

This is almost common-sense advice, but you may wish to try keeping it up for a period of a week to a month. If you truly are experiencing something like that with some consistency, you may find that patterns begin to emerge.

01:22 / 20.07.03

you hit the nail right on the head there LDones. recently ive been doing that, and a sort of plot-type-thingy is beginning to emerge.

finger n' thump

19:27 / 25.07.03

any developments?

18:13 / 26.07.03

Lummy I remember this concept croping up at least 20 years back , namely myself formulating it and it buzzing in my little head(mind you i was 9 at the time and also thought I was a Cherbum looking back at my life, while living it at the same time !!!)

03:54 / 08.08.03

dont call it a comeback...
yes l dones,there have been developments, but not that im willing to share just yet. dont want to show my baby off until its done, and all that.