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Oct. 1st, 2007 12:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kittydesadeI wrote a couple of things the other day, both of them prompt responses on ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
oldestbeloved's journal, and today at break I just now got an email that said one of them had struck a chord with a friend, and was a bit of a sniffly chord at that. It wasn't the prompt I thought it was, but it got me thinking. And the two prompts are fairly well tied in at that.
The first, which was the prompt I cross-posted here, was about the death of the imagination in modern culture. That was posted and written from the point of view of a very bitter, fairly self-destructive character. It poses the situation as being much more dire than I actually think it is, although it does irritate me how many people write or talk about or follow the same old crap. I don't think it's a phenomenon or phase that exists any more now than it did previously. People like the comfort of the same old same old, and they like living vicariously, and I believe that the only thing that's changed about human nature is that now we are innundated with more of it. The internet makes it possible to find out about what's happening around the globe, to hear live updates from your friends in Australia, Japan, Singapore, England, and Hawaii (if you happen to be up at those hours) about what's happening in their lives. In short, the world's grown smaller, but that doesn't mean it's grown more or less honest.
Sam says (Sam beingoldestbeloved) that people are more interested in conforming, in staying complacant, in living through celebrity lives and only reading or watching or paying attention to what is familiar to them. He says that there is a widespread plague on the imagination, with a high mortality rate. I don't believe this is any more true than it was a hundred years ago. But it bears some thinking on. Is it a possible effect we should look for? Is it easier to visit the same ten websites you've always been to, to talk to the same twenty people you always talk to, to read the same thirty authors you've always read even though there's a wealth of information out there?
You creative people, is the opposite true? Do you still create the same old things you created, write the same old story you've always written? For me, that was a good thing, once. I started to write the same old story, realized there was a pattern there, and then took that pattern out and gave it a voice. And now he's complaining about it. What a whiner.
But is there really a rapidly spreading die-off of the imagination? Is that what we're coming down to, am I just being optimistic? Or is it unrealistic to think we could be so stagnant in such an age of rapid-fire change? Because, think about it, we have changed so much (I hesitate to say progressed this early) in the last hundred years. Come so far, whether ahead or falling back, from where we have been. How can that have happened without imagination?
Vivid imagination, at that. This wasn't the prompt my friend commented on, it was the other one, wherein Sam, my dear old archetype figment, popped up at the local Renne Faire to say hello. A lot of you have heard me say, often, that if any one of my characters were to pop up like Harold Crick and say "boo" to me, it would be Sam. It so totally would. But is that more or less likely ot happen if no one is dreaming or imagining any more?
Is that even a good thing? I had a pretty horrible nightmare last night that resulted in extreme lack of sleep, which probably resulted in this post. The most terrifying part of it involved the nightmare creature itself turning and looking at me. Through the dream, it felt like, more real than anything Sam had ever done, it felt as though this terror had turned around inside my skull and was staring right at me. If our figments and dreams come real, wouldn't the same be true of our nightmares?
But would it be worth it to have our dreams as well? Do we have the imaginative power for that? I'd pay ... I don't know what price I'd pay to have Sam able to come into my life. He's a remarkable creature. But is this the kind of thing we would want to do? Is this the kind of nightmare we would want to unleash?
oldestbeloved's journal, and today at break I just now got an email that said one of them had struck a chord with a friend, and was a bit of a sniffly chord at that. It wasn't the prompt I thought it was, but it got me thinking. And the two prompts are fairly well tied in at that.The first, which was the prompt I cross-posted here, was about the death of the imagination in modern culture. That was posted and written from the point of view of a very bitter, fairly self-destructive character. It poses the situation as being much more dire than I actually think it is, although it does irritate me how many people write or talk about or follow the same old crap. I don't think it's a phenomenon or phase that exists any more now than it did previously. People like the comfort of the same old same old, and they like living vicariously, and I believe that the only thing that's changed about human nature is that now we are innundated with more of it. The internet makes it possible to find out about what's happening around the globe, to hear live updates from your friends in Australia, Japan, Singapore, England, and Hawaii (if you happen to be up at those hours) about what's happening in their lives. In short, the world's grown smaller, but that doesn't mean it's grown more or less honest.
Sam says (Sam being
oldestbeloved) that people are more interested in conforming, in staying complacant, in living through celebrity lives and only reading or watching or paying attention to what is familiar to them. He says that there is a widespread plague on the imagination, with a high mortality rate. I don't believe this is any more true than it was a hundred years ago. But it bears some thinking on. Is it a possible effect we should look for? Is it easier to visit the same ten websites you've always been to, to talk to the same twenty people you always talk to, to read the same thirty authors you've always read even though there's a wealth of information out there?You creative people, is the opposite true? Do you still create the same old things you created, write the same old story you've always written? For me, that was a good thing, once. I started to write the same old story, realized there was a pattern there, and then took that pattern out and gave it a voice. And now he's complaining about it. What a whiner.
But is there really a rapidly spreading die-off of the imagination? Is that what we're coming down to, am I just being optimistic? Or is it unrealistic to think we could be so stagnant in such an age of rapid-fire change? Because, think about it, we have changed so much (I hesitate to say progressed this early) in the last hundred years. Come so far, whether ahead or falling back, from where we have been. How can that have happened without imagination?
Vivid imagination, at that. This wasn't the prompt my friend commented on, it was the other one, wherein Sam, my dear old archetype figment, popped up at the local Renne Faire to say hello. A lot of you have heard me say, often, that if any one of my characters were to pop up like Harold Crick and say "boo" to me, it would be Sam. It so totally would. But is that more or less likely ot happen if no one is dreaming or imagining any more?
Is that even a good thing? I had a pretty horrible nightmare last night that resulted in extreme lack of sleep, which probably resulted in this post. The most terrifying part of it involved the nightmare creature itself turning and looking at me. Through the dream, it felt like, more real than anything Sam had ever done, it felt as though this terror had turned around inside my skull and was staring right at me. If our figments and dreams come real, wouldn't the same be true of our nightmares?
But would it be worth it to have our dreams as well? Do we have the imaginative power for that? I'd pay ... I don't know what price I'd pay to have Sam able to come into my life. He's a remarkable creature. But is this the kind of thing we would want to do? Is this the kind of nightmare we would want to unleash?