Choi Chun Hei Jacky《把迷戀說成夢》(literally, obsessions turned dreams, written in Chinese) Generative literature, Dream narrative based on automatic writings **actual writing in the next post.
This work is based on 10 successive rounds of automatic writing and subsequent modifications. My take is to create a readable work based on automatic writings of my dreams, all with the setting of me thinking and strolling on the street alone at night. It is my personal reflection as well as that on Hong Kong. There are a total of 10 dreams, amidst which I seek ambiguous connections. The final arrangement of the 10 dream episodes is close to how I often feel ideas connected in a sentimental way. These dreams could be thought of as resembling logical deduction. For me, I have put concentrated effort on the 10th dream, which to me is the most experimental.
Inspirations…
This piece of generative writing is partly inspired by OuLiPo founder Raymond Queneau’s Exercises in Style*, especially the plentiful ways he tells the same story. Along his path, I have set a different tone (humorously) for each dream before I wrote them, which turned out to shape how how my conscious thoughts flow.
The structure of dreams is always playful to me. In Natsume Kinnosuke’s collection of short stories (Dream Night), he also wrote ten dreams of completely different stories and found a way to connect some them, partially. For example, he used the concept of “100 years” to link his first two dreams.
From reading The Old School Dating written by Li Weijing, I got inspired by how an analogy can be powerful and expressive — which gives relationship a little touch of poetry.
I have integrated my understanding of psychoanalysis in my writing. The dream often is the representation of the subconscious; the battle between the superego and ego and it is foregrounded. To start with automatic writing before more structured writing, I explore my primitive desires.
Dream Structure | the Writing Process
In my attempt to invent my own dream structure, I focus on the thought of “looking back.” The wordings of “looking back” appears in every dream episode. In the ninth dream, It is used in a negative way.
I treated this writing as a way to understand my feelings in greater details. When I look back on a previous, lost, relationship that have caused me self-harm, I want to be ruthless in my writing. However, through writing ruthlessly I see how much I care about her. She is what I want to think and talk about. She is also a mirror to me. I have learnt so much about my dark side. Jealousy, rage, and the urge to over-power others are exposed — these are part of me that I have tried very hard to hide when I was still with her. To deceive and being deceived are painful to look back on. Such feelings are so amplified and becoming so clear when writing.
About the 2nd and 3rd dream
Reading what I wrote again, the second and third dream are the most interesting to me. I play with structure and try to create additional meaning with the structure. It is the only two dreams that have basically the same storyline and from different perspectives. The second dream is about my anxiety living in Hong Kong. The third dream is about my feeling of being a youngster in Hong Kong; it is also the only dream in which I am not a human, which adds ambiguity to the meanings of my writing.
About the 9th dream
The piece with which I struggled most is the ninth dream because it happened most recently. I am not ready to face my somewhat control-freak mentality. When I read it again, I see that the writing style changed along the way and seemed to be beyond control.
About the 10th dream
The tenth dream is related to the forth dream, in which I talk about emptiness. I see emptiness worse than anything. Being empty is very inhuman. Therefore, I always accept that some part of me could stay dark. I see it as a necessity. In this last dream, all the characters are looking back at each other, nothing really happens, but it is the only dream that allows me to express many things at once. That is the ambition that I have before I start writing: how can I express everything that I want to say in one dream and that somehow I could keep it comprehensible? The end of the tenth dream rolls back to where everything begins. It refers to my current situation of endlessly looking back at my past and present.
***See next post for the actual writing in Chinese.
*Related reading: a pictogram series on Raymond Queneau’s Exercises in Style [link…]from The Ventriloquists 1 (2020):
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To read the entire Ventriloquist 2021 series: http://floatingprojectscollective.net/author/ventriloquists/
