What makes a story? One could say it is the unique
interaction of people, space and time? If so, then all these elements come
together in a story in the same way as reactants come together in a chemical
reaction and every chemical reaction needs a catalyst to drive the reactants
forward to produce various products. The catalyst of the story is the author’s
imagination, which moves characters to act in ways that affect one another as
well as distort space and time to the subjective experience of the character
the author is embodying at that time. But what happens when one realizes that
what one puts into a fiction (the characters, events, times and places) can
resonate with what is happening in the “real world”? In the same way what affects the writer in
the real world becomes the raw material for creative projects of poetry, novels,
plays and other worthy artistic disciplines. It was Michelangelo who said “In every block of marble I see a statue as plain as
though it stood before me, shaped and perfect in attitude and action. I have
only to hew away the rough walls that imprison the lovely apparition to reveal
it to the other eyes as mine see it” To Michelangelo, the sculpture was
embedded in the rock, a living entity waiting to be freed. Viewed in this light we can say that the
fantasy of art is embedded in reality. Reality is the extracellular matrix
bathing the cell which is the source of all life.
With all this inflow and outflow of reality and fantasy, the
borders between these two fields can become diluted, even saturated. The
borders begin to dissolve almost and this is where we have intermingling of the
two. This occurs to a stage where what is reality can be viewed with
metaphorical lenses and what is in the imagination can be brought to life
through the individual’s creative discipline or inevitably within the
subconscious ( the subconscious being the ultimate sanctuary where reality and
fantasy enter a very intimate and interwoven communion.) If there are whisperings of fantasy in
reality (like a hosepipe being mistaken for a snake in the dead of night) and droppings
of reality within our imagination (like the erotic dreams of being intimate
with someone that in “real life” will never want or take an interest in
you) then we begin to ask the most
fundamental question : What is real?
It is at this stage that I begin to take a leap of faith
into the abyss by saying that the real world, with all its composite
constructions and machinations -composing of billions of combinations of
different atomic particles – is a fiction; perhaps even the greatest fiction
the world will ever know because we live our lives through it and are governed
by the forces of space and time within it. More so, it is so powerful that our
senses are filled to the brim with stimuli from this world. I suspect this is
what Plato pondered about when he came up with his "Philosophy of the Cave".
Plato wanted to know what is behind the veil of perception but I suggest too that
the cave is just the extracellular matrix of this world; the cave is just the
rock that encases the masterpiece, the tablet on which is written the most
eloquent and heart shattering of verses.
It is the job of the individual submersed and entrapped in the cave to
chisel away the rock around them to the point where all that exists is creative
work and a huge gaping hole where the sunlight from the outside streams in.
And what is this sunlight composed of? As we begin to strip down the objects around
us to elements, then atoms, then subatomic particles, we arrive at a location
that is both simple and holistic: energy.
It is energy that is the driving impetus that constructs the buildings
around us, the flights of stairs we climb and the clothes that we wrap ourselves
in. Energy too is the wand in the hand
of the magician which pulls rabbits from hats and sets sails to countless
adventures of tragedy, triumph, comedy and romance. Ultimately, we are fishes in oceans of energy,
without it we cannot breath; without it we dry up. So we must learn to feel this
wealth of energy surrounding us; be able to channel it , wield it somehow and
most importantly be able to view it constantly for what it essentially is. That
way nothing that happens to you in this life can really affect you because
since the dawn of time constructions have been placed for you to grow into and
for you to acknowledge energy incessantly is to break down the constructions
and look at life at its very basic. In this light, things that mattered become
inconsequential. The question then remains what matters? Your body, your life, your space, your time
is an organic factory meant to churn out creative work. Creative work can encompass a many great
aspects of human civilization from science to architecture, engineering and of
course the arts. It is through creative
endeavor that our own built up memories and personally tinged views get
transmuted into the collage of what the human race can contribute to this
magnanimous expanding beast that is the universe. This life (your life) is a fiction
embedded in the nebulous of the universal mind. You are only an angle in the corner of the universe
and the sooner we realize this, the sooner we can accept other people for who
they are and also live our lives in full freedom from the societal standards to
which we are pressurized to follow.
(Note: I encourage you to look up Plato's Allergory of the Cave )
