20050423

remember when?

i'm listening to various rock and roll songs and enjoying it.

Do you remember when you lost your imagination? I remember even up to the age of 13 (i know, loser?) playing some serious lego with my brothers (who will remained unnamed for their own protection), and man... we had imagination. We would make whole cities... okay, more frequently they were army out posts... and we'd have people who had lives... or at least armies... and we'd have a blast.

WHAT HAPPENED? How come I can't think that way anymore? It's almost like with the media saturation I've put myself in, I don't ever have two creative thoughts to rub together. I stopped caring about the fantastic and instead became obsessed with the mediocre. I think that, to some degree or another, that's probably true of most of us. I'll concede that there MUST be exceptions, cause otherwise we wouldn't have things like Calvin and Hobbes (come back Mr. Watterson, please, come back!), or Ender's Game, or the Lord of the Rings... at least, the books. But, I think that for most of us, reading other people's imaginitive spewing forths is probably as close as we get. We're constantly surrounding ourselves with noise and things to occupy us. Even as I'm doing this, my computer features Hootie and the Blowfish (pre-burger king ad days), there's some dvds waiting to be watched, and some laundry to fold and stuff. Mundane. If i try real hard, I can explain it away with "well, that's real life." Realistically though, that' s not real life -- it's life the way we've fashioned it. And it's not cool. So, take the time to imagine something... there's nothing wrong with imagination. Or playing with lego, either. (Is legos the plural of lego? does it matter?) Gosh, a little more media saturation, and we'll all be brain dead.

2 comments:

Todd said...

And everyone wonders why I seem so crazy all the time... I agree with you, our world saps the life out of imaginative thought with its mediocre ways. However I also think people are afraid to fail in their imaginings. I know from personal experience in all my attempts at inventing games, languages, stories, that it is not an easy thing to do and more often then not, things fizzle out or dry up. Furthermore, finding someone to try your idea is can be a hard thing to do(luckily most of the time I just bullied Caleb into playing the game I had just invented). I am inspired in Calvin and Hobbes and many other books to look at life in a different manner, but in doing so one is sometimes misunderstood (as Calvin is!)

Mack I think you are dead on. And so is Bill Watterson:

Calvin (in class): "Booorrriiinnng"
Calvin (on his way to the principal's office): "Ya, Ya, kill the messenger"

gracie said...

That was a bit of nostalgia for me. I remember when I came to visit you (the three ambassadors :o) in Puerto Rico.
I watched the three of you play - literally all day - in the living room with lego, and you did have an entire city, and I was amazed that you got along so well, and that your big brother was still into lego.
I think you might get your imagination back when you play with children - your own or someone elses.