Misinterpretation as inspiration A lot of people think dreams and drugs involve some magical inspiration. I think otherwise. I rarely get inspired by dreams or drugs, but I have my own secret source of inspiration: mishearing other people. Somebody says something, I misinterpret it, and the misinterpretation is quite interesting – more interesting than anything I would have come up with on my own if asked to generate an interesting idea. Maybe it’s a clever joke or turn of phrase. Maybe it’s a neat idea. Sometimes I misunderstand people’s entire positions, and end up with positions much more interesting than the ones they were trying to push. Scott Alexander, Negative Creativity slatestarcodex.com Mondegreen mistakesinterestdrugsdreamscreativitymondegreens
Poetic drugs In the final chapters Bachelard lets slip (a confession really) how if he "were a psychiatrist," he would recommend a poem by Baudelaire to treat "anguish." His squabble then is not with the purpose but rather the approach of a still-young profession. And of course, why not treat the power of great poems as something akin to "virtual 'drugs'"? Mark Z. Danielewski, The Poetics of Space psychologypoetrypaindrugs
Doubling Obetrolling didn't make me self-conscious. But it did make me much more self-aware. If I was in a room, and had taken an Obetrol or two with a glass of water and they'd taken effect, I was now not only in the room, but I was aware that I was in the room. In fact, I remember I would often think, or say to myself, quietly but very clearly, 'I am in this room.' It's difficult to explain this. At the time, I called it 'doubling', but I'm still not entirely sure what I meant by this, nor why it seemed so profound and cool to not only be in a room but be totally aware that I was in the room. David Foster Wallace, The Pale King drugsattention
Numbers/Words A Gallery by Daniel Eatock eatock.com Christmastime 04:04:044:56Numeric anagrams
Christmastime 04:04:04 Turn it upside down. I was in a hotel room a few years ago and I woke up in the early hours and glanced at the digital clock radio. It displayed the time using six digits HH:MM:SS Just at the moment I glanced it flicked over to 04:04:04. It occurred to me that, using calculator word logic, this would read ‘ho ho ho’ if viewed upside down. That year I produced a Christmas card with those digits on the front and ‘Christmastime’ printed upside down as the message on the inside. In the absence of any further explanation, absolutely nobody understood the card. numbers
4:56 I was looking at my digital clock last-night and it occurred to me that 4:56 is quite an interesting time. 4 uses four segments of the seven-segment display 5 uses five segments of the seven-segment display 6 uses six segments of the seven-segment display numbers
Numeric anagrams "Eleven plus two" is an anagram of "twelve plus one". — Craig Sharp / Twelve + One = Eleven + Two I love the beauty of this numeric/anagram equation for 13 — Linda Vanderkolk words