Inducing Reverie

Steven Heighton uses the pretext of taking aim at screen devices to call for a renewed interest in the creative aspects of boredom.

Whatever. The issue here is screen media. The issue is that staring into space—in that musing, semi-bored state that can precede or help produce creative activity—is impossible when you keep interposing a screen between your seeing mind and the space beyond. The idea is to stare at nothing—to let nothingness permeate your field of vision, so that externally unstimulated mind revs down, begins to brood and muse and dream.

Steven Heighton. Work Book: memos & dispatches on writing.

Eyes closed and there are screen memories to contend with. Eyes open and they still alight on details of our environment. It is very very difficult to focus on nothing. Easier to stare and to gaze. And tune out and let the mind wander at will.

One wonders if the flicker of screens cannot in some circumstances invoke a hypnotic state and lead to the nothingness that helps the mind rev down. Would it be any different from watching waves?

And so for day 1134
20.01.2010