The other day in Chicago, one of my co-panelists said something like this: Your imagination is limitless.
I thought about that for a moment.
Moment is a word that I rarely use. It sounds pretentious and condescending.
But I have heard that frequently. It's kind of like mass-hysteria.
Disneyspeak.
Your imagination has no limits.
Or shit like that.
Um.
Yes.
Yes it does have limits.
It has definite limits, and I can tell you precisely and to a pinpoint of accuracy where your imagination ends in the black, idea-less void of eternal dumbness.
Do you want to know where your imagination runs up against the sizzling barbwire fence of emptiness?
Even if it makes your head explode?
Okay.
Here goes: Your imagination is only as vast as the number of words you have in your head.
Period.
In fact, it would be a simple feat to mathematically calculate the exact dimensions of your imagination based on the combination of linguistic structures and the rules by which you apply the syntactical framework of understanding -- making sense -- of those building blocks to reality.
Words.
Sorry to burst your giant balloon.
Imagination = Finite.
You can't argue with that truth.
Go ahead.
Try this: Try to imagine something that is also not a word.
You can't do it.
Even if you get all righteously indignant and try to picture something that does not exist, you will not be able to picture anything unless you begin by giving it words -- colors, teeth, hair, geometric constraints, words, words, words.
Words are reality, and reality cannot exist without words.
Which brings me back to the topic of yesterday's post: Is there too much reality in young adult (I will no longer capitalize those words because I am punishing them for being bars on my cage) literature?
I believe this: I believe there is not enough reality in young adult literature, simply because there are far too many examples that can be held up to the light of scrutiny and reveal their predictable sameness, their application of one-size-fits-all imaginations.
We will talk.
Happy Thanksgiving.
Your brains are leaking out.
6 comments:
The whole thing about imagination being finite reminds me of something I read about a year ago. It was about trying to imagine a new color. It cannot be a shade of any other colors. It is impossible to imagine.
There is also a quote by Mark Twain that suits the question of reality in YA literature. "Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't." This should be proof that there isn't too much reality in these books.
Word.
(Tries to scrape brains up, scoop back into head)
Reading your blog entry today reminded me of Orwell’s _1984_—specifically Orwell’s idea, trumpeted through the character Syme, whose job is to “simplify” the English dictionary, that the government controls people, in part, by controlling language.
In the novel this means that citizens won’t rebel or fight for freedom if the words”rebel” or “freedom” do not exist.
You said that imagination is limited by language.
Do you think that all products of imagination are also limited by language? I can see how this would be true when it came to “language-based” products (e.g., novels, songs, poems), but what about art or music?
First off, let me say that I don’t play a musical instrument, but couldn’t I use my imagination to create music without ever needing words? And wouldn’t using my imagination to create art work in a similar way?
Even as I type this I’m wondering if I’m mixing up “imagination” with “creativity” and wondering, too, if those two words are different, whether “creativity” has its limits as does “imagination"…
You know what? I need to go baste the turkey.
Have a great Thanksgiving, everyone.
Merry Thanksgiving everyone!
Respectfully, I disagree.
I agree that our ability to imagine is limited by the words with which we have in our toolbox to describe things. Just as a cabinet maker's ability to make cabinets is limited by the tools he has and the raw materials at his disposal.
However, I believe that you're overlooking two things:
1. The number of combinations that can be created with the words in our toolboxes is limited by nothing. Sure, there are rules. Punctuation, syntax, grammar, puke. Creative types love puking on the rules. They love doing things that break the rules in so many different ways that they will, indeed, make your head explode. Every book of yours that I've read has done it. You described Stick's world using the words in your toolbox. Then you took a sledgehammer to those words. Arranging them in a way that must have given the layout people at your publisher mini heart attacks every time they looked at them. Arranging them in such a genius way that I understood Stick's world better than if you'd written them in a conventional manner. You described Stick's world using the words in your head. And then some.
2. We may be bound by the words in our heads--the cabinet maker may be bound by the tools in his box and the wood in his workshop--but that doesn't preclude us from seeking out new words, from creating new tools. The words in MY head may be finite, but words themselves, not so much. When we don't have the words to describe what we see in our imaginations, we search for the words to do so. When the words don't exist, we create them. If people's abilities to imagine and dream shit up were bound to the known, to the words already created, we'd never have evolved. People like Einstein and Tesla and Lovecraft, surely thought up things for which no words existed. Yeah, we use words to describe thing things we dream up, but words are not the end and beginning of all things.
Take water, for example. I can use words to describe it. I can say it's wet, cold (sometimes hot), soft, smooth. I can refer to other things to describe it. Water feels like the air on a Florida day in the summer. I can tell you what it doesn't feel like. I can even describe it using science. Give you its properties, its chemical composition. But I have not really told you what water is. You may not need me to, because you've filled in the details with your own experiences. But to a man who has never seen water, never felt it, never taken off all his clothes and stepped into the ocean, those words are meaningless.
So I'm going to counter: imagination is finite. Our words are the things we use to describe our reality. But it's our experiences that create the boundaries of our imaginations. And the only limit to the things we can experience--good, bad, horrific--is death. In that way, the potential to imagine is nearly limitless.
On another topic, we do need more reality in books. Sadly, I'm afraid that our literature is being turned into fast food. Easy to get, easy to digest, and full of the kind of shit that will turn your heart into a gelatinous mass of goo.
But the beautiful part is that you can always get more words. And if you can't find the one you need, you can make a new one. You only have to know 26 letters.
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