By Harvey Jacobs
The other day I heard a young student confide in his friend, “You know what? I’m just not a creative person. I know they say we need creative people but I guess some of us don’t make the cut.”
I was left thinking about that boy’s self-image and the larger question of whether some of us just “don’t make the cut.” Then I remembered that everybody has dreams—not those realized dreams of glory or future triumph the media love to celebrate, just the ordinary dreams, however modest, we experience most every night.
Not only is our dream life essential to wellbeing, or so the scientists tell us, it absolutely answers any question of doubt about creativity. Consider the credits that roll down the screen at the end of a film. They keep on coming: Writer, Director, Producer, Cast, Editor, a hundred or so in the support crew from the grips to the grunts, a comet trail of songs, a nod to whoever wrote the score, the legal stuff, copyrights, everybody from Best Boy to Key Grip to Special Effects by… and on and on.
Well, for every nightly dream or dream fragment or even day dream, we do it all ourselves; every one of those credits belongs to us. We craft the plot, build the scenes,
choose the cast, write the script, ride herd on the art direction, aim the cameras, whatever it takes to make a film comes from a single source…the dreamer the same young student who declared himself non-creative.
Today there is a huge emphasis on the teaching of science and math. We are told that new horizons of invention and industry depend on those skills. That’s all true, but the fact is, every idea begins with a vision, a spark and only then do the tekkies step in and make it happen. And those ideas spring from the mysterious source called the creative imagination. The first glimmers of some marvel depend for traction on a readiness to receive them, on providing a place for them to flourish.
The thrust toward the new begins with imagination, translates to accomplishment, and ends with marketing. Without imagination and creativity, future possibilities remain unexplored, undeveloped.—and we are in real trouble, playing the sorry game of catch-up in a very competitive world.
But what’s happening to the environment for seminal dreams? It is being buffeted and even destroyed by the assault of ever more manipulative technology. More and more, pictures are replacing picturing. We, and more important, our kids, are being served with uniform, pre-mixed formulas for thought.
It used to be that much of the genesis for active imagination came from books. Children to adults, we were forced to do our own work when it came to seeing, even feeling, a dimensional character in a story. Oh, there were always splendid picture books out there but most left the chore of fleshing out those words to the reader. Fact is, words are being replaced by graphics. There’s a pandemic going around of abbreviated attention span, and, alas, teachers and students intimidated by language.
When radio came along, listeners had much the same challenge as readers. A single sound-man in the studio could squire you to Grand Central Station with the hoot of a train whistle, or back through time to a kingdom ruled by dinosaurs. We were given a few simple clues, but connecting the dots and filling in the images was ours to accomplish.
Film and television, both miracle media, lifted much of the burden of imagination, and very likely the ability to maximize the uses of imagination simply by doing it for us. Now we see somebody else’s fabrication of Dr. Frankenstein or Sherlock Holmes. Sure, we soar at warp speed into deep space, it’s all there to see, all manufactured for us, galvanic, certainly pleasurable and easier, but pre-packaged–far less demanding of personal effort.
And now comes the resurrection of 3D technology and the unfolding of virtual worlds. When the subject is video games (which are more and more compelling) players are asked to make choices. In building those games, the designers include a spine that, like the trunk of a tree with many branches, leads the expert player to an already determined spot at the summit. The “right choice” is a hidden voice.
A certain amount of inter-active imagining is in the mix, like the creation of avatars, but the players are guided, directed albeit by subtle road signs. Where we end “winners” is a built-in component.
Real imagination should be unfettered by a superimposed set of directions. Nothing replaces silent contemplation—thoughts and feelings that come to life in a quiet room on a rainy day.
It is obviously easier and surely exciting to enjoy the feeling of just sitting back and watching, or even participating in an interactive mode. There is even some comfort in the knowledge that there is a correct way to reach a goal. But it is not through a true freedom of mind. Architecting even a flicker of your own home-made dream is a more creative and rewarding experience than any manufactured thrill and, I think, more essential.
Fertile and active imagination is the building block of achievement. Science and math are vapid unless there is a nexus with art, play, and creativity, all essential elements of a transformative dream.
It might be a very worthwhile exercise to focus a part of our school curriculums on strengthening the sinews of liberated imagination, on encouraging curiosity and originality, on substituting or at least curbing, ersatz stimulation for the chance to release the real marvel of inner magic.
An author named Delmore Schwsartz wrote a marvelous story called “In Dreams Begin Responsibility.” The future hides in dreams and must be coaxed into the light, not replaced by special effects.
Hey, kiddo, don’t worry about being creative. That dream you conjured out of mist last night might just win you an Oscar. And you did it your way.
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