Creative Crossovers

I think my first clear memory of the phenomenon was when I was in  7th grade, so maybe I was 12 or thirteen. I came home from school and put a stack of classical records on the turntable. The notion of a “turntable” may need a little explaining for those of you born after 1960 or so. Time was when if you wanted to listen to more than about 12 minutes of recorded music without interruption your only option were “LPs.”  LPs were vinyl records about the size of a medium pizza. (Which are making something of a comeback. “Everything old is new again.”) You would then put an “automatic changer” on your record player which would drop a record on to the turntable when one was done, and start playing the next one. You could load 4 or 5 up this way, and depending on the quality of your set up, listen to a fair amount of music before things began to slip and distort.

Anyhow I put a bunch of classical LPs on the turntable and began to write freeform verse in a little white 5x7 notebook. As the music played- I scribbled really, really freeform verse. I just kept writing until the music ran out. Then I closed the notebook and probably went to make myself a sandwich. Yeah, time also was when you would also make a sandwich all by yourself- no fries. Maybe chips. I still have that little white notebook somewhere, at least I have “discovered” it several times while changing homes, offices,  jobs, loves, lives and wives. No content that I’d really care to share, but now some 60 years later I better understand how one creative piece of our brain can easily slide a bit sideways into another medium.

I now do it more consciously, and it is my intention to share a couple of separate posts with you. One is verbal, very similar, at least in process to the creation of the little white notebook. The other is visual and deals with my current activity blending , chopping, what have you of drawings and photography.