Have you ever had a good night’s sleep only to wake up to find that the world around you is no longer what you thought it was? But did you still want to drift around in that wooden state, exploring the distant worlds of fantasy and dreams? So you let your attention go where it wanted to travel. You lay half asleep, enjoying the moment.
That’s what good fiction and fantasy books do for a person. It is also what art does, what song does, what composition does.
I write, and this is exactly what I do when I write. I let my mind go where it wants to go. I don’t control it. I don’t dictate which road or mountain or cloud it must travel. It is as if I, the writer, am the dreamer, and am dreaming for others as well. And I write like a travel diary to where my mind goes. That’s my job.
I have also read the best and been led down the same path of dreams by the world’s most exalted writers and dreamers. That’s why I worship science fiction. I like to be guided along the way by those great masters of Heinlein, Asimov, Herbert, Donaldson and more. That’s why I like to dream for others.
Good books take you where you need to use your mind, imagination, dream, far beyond the confines of the material world. It is your world, your real world where your mind goes. Imagination is your asset. In fact, it is perhaps one of the few assets that a spiritual being truly has. We use it to live, plan and even make a shopping list.
Good music will do the same. It takes you there. You can invite that beautiful sadness, from times past or times not yet reached. The music does it for you. You can also cook.
The paintings can, while you marvel at how the artist did it. buildings can.
Imagination is so important. Without her, I’m not even sure how alive we are.
You always finish the book and then look around. You look around you. It’s like waking up to the alarm clock on Monday morning, at 6 am. You have to go to the grim office to make another grim dollar for the man. But you take the remains of the dream with you.
Or, he puts down his book to go and make a coffee and reflect on what he has just read, and compare it to the universe around him. You look at those pages and where they took you. You love your book. That’s why I write and encourage everyone to write, paint, sing and more.
We call the physical universe the real world. And if we see someone challenging his system, we sometimes tell him to stop dreaming and get real. But is that really true, is this reality that we call the physical universe really real? Some great spirituals have claimed that it is not.
And so, too, can’t the world in which the artist lives be somehow more real than anything money can buy in the physical universe?
Could it be that an artist, writer, singer, can lead us to places more real than anything we can touch? Is not the artist more valuable than the most mortal men?
