An Experiment With Google and Blackout Channelling

Suddenly, while reading letters and papers he left behind in Belgium, I was making all these curious "blackout poetry" pieces... And I was wondering: could it be the spirits speaking, through literary techniques, producing Google-, Blackout- and Found Poetry, Cut-Ups and Recycled Words?

Austin Kleon published with Newspaper Blackout a best-selling book of poetry, "made by redacting newspaper articles with a permanent marker". He calls himself "a creative writer in the digital age" (and a writer who draws too). The artist Tom Phillips has a work in progress since 1966 (A Humument), creating entirely new versions of a second-hand book he bought for threepence, and altering every page of it with paintings, collages and cut-ups.

Literary cut-ups can be made by cutting a text in pieces and then rearrange them into a new one. The Dadaist movement already used the technique in the 1920's, with Tristan Tzara "writing" a poem on the spot by pulling words from a hat. The Waste Land (T.S. Eliot) incorporated also newspaper clippings.

In the 1950s, the painting writer (or vice versa) Brion Gysin created newspaper collages and cut-ups. He introduced Beat Poet William S. Burroughs to the technique. They worked with mixed media and audio recordings, in order to "decode the material's implicit content" and discover "the true meaning of a given text". According to Burroughs, cut-ups could be effective as a form of divination, because "when you cut into the present the future leaks out".

Mary Ruefle makes "erasure books" by erasing words from an existing text. And Will Ashford "recycles" the words of other people. Like an archeologist he hunts for the words that speak out to him, gives them a new meaning, turns them into a kind of poetry he can call his own. "At some unpredictable point along the way, in my mind, the images start to invent themselves," he says.

I truly believe cut-ups and blackouts, erasure or recycling techniques are "shortcuts" to the personal unconscious, made up of forgotten memories and traumas, too weak to reach the consciousness -- or too dangerous, and therefore suppressed by the ego. And I believe that you can delve into the collective consciousness by using Google and the "autocomplete suggestions" to write Google Poetry. Because:

"Google writes poetry on subjects that people are truly interested in."

I started to ask Google a question about Philip I don't even remember now: "Is Philip Coppens...?" And Google autocompleted with: "Is Philip Coppens dead?" When the news of his death broke through, many of his readers and the fans of the Ancient Aliens series couldn't believe it was true. They thought it was an example of the "doubtful news" or the "disinformation" Philip always had studied, and they asked Google: "Is Philip Coppens dead?"

Now I went searching Philip on Google and made this blackout:

doubtfulnews.com/.../alternative-ancient-history-auth...

31 dec. 2012 - Philip Coppens, commentator on the History Channel's Ancient Aliens:

16 dec. 2012 - An Old Age has indeed died, or is dying, and is replaced with a new one.

Philip Coppens

shaggy-haired speculator

of the Ancient Aliens

made his transition.

But then I took a picture of my PC screen showing this piece of blackout poetry. The picture was meant for Instagram and I was only trying to create some special effect... But what I didn't knew at the moment, was that a page on "channelling" still was opened...

And so, I didn't find a special effect, but another layer of the same message... I had to go channelling!

And I also believe you can do this by silencing your conscious mind and inner critic, using blackout-, erasure- and Google Poetry techniques.

The Collective Unconscious is universal and cannot be built up like one's personal unconscious. It is a repository of the religious, spiritual and mythological experiences, the knowledge and the symbols of mankind. The main structures of the Collective Unconscious, to be found in the deep darkness of our psyche, are called "archetypes". Jung stated that these spiritual forms are the patterns, prototypes and matrixes of all our religious and mythological concepts. They have existed since "the remotest times", since the early dawn of mankind (and even longer)... and they were "inherited" by us. For Carl Gustav Jung, the Collective Unconscious was not only some sort of "Universal Mind", not only a metaphysical reality (like Plato's "World of Forms") but a psycho-biological one.

The biologist Rupert Sheldrake speaks of "morphogenetic fields (of the mind)", "morphic resonance" and "the memory of nature": "Animals inherit the successful habits of their species as instincts. We inherit bodily, emotional, mental and cultural habits, including the habits of our languages."

Or, in the recycled words of a letter published in Fortean Times Magazine:

in morphic fields

our mind reaches out

provoking

in spatial dimensions

bizarre coincidences

prophetic dreams

And:

look at someone

from behind and find

they turn around

sight might be

more than

light in the eye

Without knowing what you’re exactly searching for, suddenly you do find something… and it is an answer to a question maybe not formulated yet, but very essential and perfectly clear. It is similar to automatic writing, but the other way around.

"Virtually all the literary greats will testify that they did not know where their Muse exactly came from but allude to it being external to them," Tom Evans says in his article The Art of Channelling. "And the good news is: you don't have to be a great artist, we all can do it." Seeing a child immersed in a drawing, Evans thought of the famous Picasso quote: "All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.”

We only have to go back to this "child-like state of awe and wonder", seeing where we will start the journey, not knowing where it will bring us, opening our mind for whatever crosses our path... and letting the Spirits speak to us.

Channelling is not just "connecting with the departed", but to go where our Muse is residing. It's how artists -- writers, musicians, painters -- are seeking the source again and again, where their most sublime work comes from. And when they have found the Inspiration, they only have to follow the flow and lead it through the appropriate channels.

And okay, there is this quote attributed to Einstein as well as to Edison about Genius that is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration -- but you don't have to be a Genius. (And without Inspiration, they wouldn't have to sweat it out!)

Is it the Mind of God or the Universal Mind? Is it the Work of Angels or the Whispering of a Spirit Guide? Is it the Message of a Dear Departed or the Secret Wisdom of an Ascended Master? I don't know, I'm an agnostic. But I think the Output may have something to do with the Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious, the Memory of Nature, Morphic Resonance...

And it doesn't matter where the words came from. It's the Output that matters.

This is what came through in a Blackout:

You and I

we are incarnating

again

my spacetime relative

we come together

as one

body and soul

entwined

in Communion

enclosing a

Dream of Joy