Mem­o­ries and the Sub­con­scious delve into the intrigu­ing process by which artists, specif­i­cal­ly vocal­ists, tap into their sub­con­scious to gen­er­ate con­tent with­out pri­or plan­ning. It opens with the obser­va­tion that vocal­ists, when exposed to new instru­men­tal tracks, tend to instinc­tive­ly pro­duce sounds or utter­ances, which, while appear­ing ran­dom, can often evolve into coher­ent sto­ries or reveal sig­nif­i­cant phras­es. This spon­ta­neous cre­ation, the chap­ter posits, emerges not from an active effort at com­po­si­tion but from a deep-seat­ed reser­voir of mate­r­i­al with­in the sub­con­scious.

The chap­ter then intro­duces a method­ol­o­gy designed to facil­i­tate access to this inner well­spring of cre­ativ­i­ty. It describes an exer­cise focused on emo­tion­al release—specifically, the sug­ges­tion to aggres­sive­ly strike a pil­low for a dura­tion of five min­utes, a task that proves sur­pris­ing­ly chal­leng­ing to sus­tain. Fol­low­ing this phys­i­cal release, the indi­vid­ual is advised to imme­di­ate­ly write freely for five pages. The crit­i­cal aspect of this exer­cise is the empha­sis on non-direc­tion; par­tic­i­pants are encour­aged to let words flow with­out con­scious con­trol or inten­tion.

Expand­ing on the util­i­ty and sig­nif­i­cance of the sub­con­scious in cre­ative endeav­ors, the chap­ter asserts that this inter­nal space har­bors a vast repos­i­to­ry of high-qual­i­ty infor­ma­tion, ripe for explo­ration. It sug­gests that the psy­che is con­nect­ed to a ‘uni­ver­sal wis­dom,’ a repos­i­to­ry of insight that sur­pass­es the lim­i­ta­tions of our con­scious intel­lect. This notion points to a ‘less lim­it­ed view,’ likened to an ‘ocean­ic source,’ which, despite its mys­te­ri­ous nature and the unclear mech­a­nisms behind its oper­a­tion, has been an under­val­ued well­spring for artis­tic inno­va­tion.

The core idea under­scored through­out is that many artists unknow­ing­ly lever­age their sub­con­scious, tap­ping into a force beyond their imme­di­ate com­pre­hen­sion or con­trol, to pro­duce work that res­onates on a deep­er lev­el. The chap­ter clos­es by mar­veling at the process by which the sub­con­scious con­tributes to cre­ativ­i­ty, high­light­ing its poten­cy and the mys­tery that sur­rounds its influ­ence on artis­tic expres­sion.