No, I'm not going to beat that drunk horse and for those of you who have waded through Michael Bakhtin I'm simply going to nod lightly in that direction by pointing out the one slender connecting thread. Within the carnival (which is sometimes raging dancing beating splashing spouting starving drowning eating in my head)the rules/meanings/standards break down. This seems similar to what Donald Murray said about ease "I lower my standards. I write easily. And I write fast. Velocity is central to my curriculum...And to Hell with John Calvin, I'll accept this example of easy writing."
I'm gonna dig into it a little bit now.
In-spirit-ation. Yes, I spelled it "wrong." But the web of connotation, those unconscious (or preconscious, let's not get too hung up on rigor) meaning jumps that flew at me from "to hell with John Calvin." I assume we're all pretty familiar, but to me and my background, John Calvin is the icon for theistic determinism, predestination, lack of freedom, and many other static yuckinesses. By his own dogma, if he were destined for hell he'd be headed there, no chance to get off that highway, might as well hop on AC/DC's tour bus for an easier ride. This inspiration thing, though, seems to slap away determinism. Like the Graves "possession" comment, like the mythologies of Barthes, like my use of the expression "automatic writing," there runs this undercurrent of the spiritual in our thoughts on where the words come from. Heidegger thought of poets as being in the "Between" of the gods and the people. Plato argued against poetic inspiration in the Ion, which implies that the ancient Greeks commonly believed in it. What comes out of your pen is only held back by the inner critic and the attempt to conform.
I'll end with a quote from Rob Zombie, a grab at the spirit of Murray's need for velocity in his writing-
"I'm demon speeding
get it on, get it on, get it on, get it on come alive
Hey, do ya love me elevating the madness?"
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