The one time I actually want to blog about something, not just repeat for the umpteenth time that I have nothing interesting to say, and blogger is down for maintenance, so I’m typing this in Word to paste in later.
Last night we watched Finding Neverland. I thought it was really good. Definitely worth watching if you haven’t seen it already. Johnny Depp is fast becoming my favourite actor, because he really does act. I forget it’s Johnny Depp every time I watch him because he becomes the character. It’s hard to say that with a lot of actors, with so many they take similar roles and you always know it’s them, you don’t get as drawn in. Admittedly a lot of Johnny Depp’s characters are oddballs, but all in their own unique way.
What I wanted to blog about was imagination. Finding Neverland was all about using your imagination and it was brilliant, but it made me think about how little people do imagine nowadays. Everything is done for us, our TV shows and films have effects which are so realistic we take them for granted, and it can even be hard to remember they’re not real. Computer games supply graphics and sounds, there’s very little for us to add to anything using our imaginations. Initially I was thinking that this mostly affects children, but then I thought, how often do I imagine things now? I used to have new and interesting ideas (to me anyway, if not to anyone else) I used to spend hours in my own mind (which okay, perhaps wasn’t all that healthy, but still) I used to produce things which were creative. Now, I just watch and listen and have everything supplied ready made, okay I join in, World of Warcraft is obviously interactive, but I don’t have to imagine much of it, I can see the world and the characters. My blog entries are proof of this, I can’t even imagine enough any more to create interesting versions of my life’s events. What use is a blog if you just write what you’ve done? Using your imagination and making it more interesting is far superior. No, I’m not talking about lying.
So, what am I going to do about this? I don’t know, but maybe I will try to imagine things a bit more, I just hope that being spoon fed all of the information that I need about things hasn’t killed the imagination centre of my brain.
As to children, perhaps they are the biggest casualties, after all, I am supposedly a grown-up, many would say that I should not be using my imagination. Children should definitely be spending days in a world of their own making though. Yet this opportunity is being taken from them. I don’t know what we can do about it, particularly if they are resistant to change. Perhaps I can plea to any parents out there: be mean, turn off the computer, get some cardboard boxes out and turn your living room into a stormy ocean (no, that doesn’t mean flooding it) and be pirates pillaging other ships for their booty, or go on an adventure in the darkest jungle in your garden, hacking through trees, avoiding deadly snakes and crossing deep chasms. Take them to the library, reading is still a way of being drawn into imaginary worlds, as someone who works in a library I am seeing the decline in children coming in, okay maybe they do have books at home, but they can’t have that many surely, to be able to read 5 or 6 books a week.
