Question by Lady Amalthea: What does Stream of Consciousness mean?
What exactly does Stream of Consciousness mean?
I am trying to interpret music that was based on a literature that has a stream of consciousness.
What does this mean?
Does it refer to a stream of thoughts during meditation?
Best answer:
Answer by February’s kisses
When your thinking too much. Deep in thought. Drowning in your thoughts. Self-possessed, I guess.
Add your own answer in the comments!
I’m not 100% sure, but i would think it is like a train of thought. Like when you start off thinking about umbrellas and you end up thinking about play-doh.
It’s a famous form of narration that tries to show a character’s inner thoughts.
Books written with stream-of-consciousness narration usually represent one or more characters’ interior monologues, and can sometimes be hard to read, because thoughts, images and perceptions are presented, sometimes loosely connected or seemingly randomly.
James Joyce and Virginia Woolf used it a lot, and it is usually associated with the Modernist era (1910s – 1930s).
Stream of Consciousness in writing is when you simply write words that come to mind, they may not even go together but after a while begin to take form. To apply it to music, I would think of Jazz. Something that seems like a random melody but take the form of a song. Hope this helps.
I grabbed this real quick right off of wiki:
“Stream of consciousness is a narrative mode that seeks to portray an individual’s point of view by giving the written equivalent of the character’s thought processes, either in a loose interior monologue, or in connection to his or her actions.”
If the music is based off a literary work that has a stream of consciousness prose, I’d suspect it would be very loosely based on the literature, more of an allegory perhaps, or what the singer/songwriter thought of the literary work. Unless, ofcourse the music is word for word what the literature is, which is unlikely.
Writing wise it’s when you continue to write and you don’t stop, you just keep going with what your brain is thinking at the time. Even if your talking about waking up in the morning, and then the next thing you know your talking about your dog. Stream of Conscious books are more polished up because they are edited. A Million Little Pieces for the most part is a great example of stream of conscious writing. Jazz and progressive music, such as tool, would be considered stream of conscious music.
You are very close with your description of the stream of thoughts during meditation. Stream of consciousness means you are not consciously thinking about anything – just letting your ideas wander.