As children, we are more prone to dreaming up mythical creatures, fearing mythical creatures and making imaginary friends with mythical creatures than we are as adults (or technically adults).
This may seem like a very obvious statement, as “grown-ups” rarely bring up the make-believe unicorns that live in their garages and eat their begonias in daily water-cooler conversation.
But my question is, why not? We all still have imaginations.
We all still have the capability for creativity.
We should all still be talking about, or at least dreaming about, our unicorns!
Wouldn’t everything seem less mundane if we exercised our long-abandoned creative juices every other Thursday?
Why should it all be left up to J.K. Rowling and her four-eyed friend Harry?
With Halloween now in the past, most of us won’t dress up as vampires, boo-ghosts, or even the admittedly popular but completely mythical, promiscuously-dressed police officers and fire fighters for at least another 360 days.
Sure, costumes, imaginary friends and dreamt fantasies may have no application to the real world, but when I saw “Where the Wild Things Are” the other night I couldn’t really remember why I ever stopped dreaming up things that don’t exist.
The boy in the movie finds himself in an all-out saga with the coolest-looking freaks you’ve ever seen.
Maurice Sendak, the author of the book, and those who made the movie are either on some really potent and likely illegal substance or, as I like to think, they just never surrendered their youthful imaginations.
The closest I currently come to seeking imaginary inspiration is Googling pictures of bearded monkeys and then gleefully giggling.
Bearded monkeys are actually real but, to their credit, certainly do not at all look real (I highly recommend this activity; check out the De Brazza’s monkey first).
I can remember the stories I would compose as a child that involved characters completed fabricated in my little (twisted) elementary school head.
And even if you weren’t always a writer, I’m sure you thought of a six-headed monster or eight-handed beast somewhere along the timeline of your imagination.
Maybe something plagued your bedroom at night making it a frighteningly haunted space instead of a cradling coliseum of slumber.
For me, it was one of those long-snouted butlers that rich cartoon characters like to boss around in Disney movies.
My butler was actually made of a dusty paper towel, crumpled in just the right way to make my imagination run wild and my pulse spike on nights that I decided he was on the prowl.
Why would a butler be out to kill me? I still don’t really know, but I think it was a pretty clever creation and I still know I’d feel weird in a house that employed household wait staff.
Outside of the personal realm, I don’t think many awesome mythical creatures have been added to the oeuvre of a once tremendous group of weirdos.
What happened to the greats like Puff the Magic Dragon and Eureka of “Eureka’s Castle?” Sure, these characters still exist in some fantasy land, but why do we have to stop humming their theme songs just because we are pursuing college degrees?
These tales shouldn’t stop with the classics so maybe we need to be writing our own. I have a request.
If I come out with a book on a 12-tailed bearded monkey with a purple face, evergreen eyes and its mouth and nose in opposite positions on its face, I expect everyone who has read this article to read that story, propose a theme song for it or at least applaud me when they make it into a low budget, G-rated film.
Sunny Side Up: Reinvigorating the adult imagination
Published: Thursday, November 5, 2009
Updated: Thursday, November 5, 2009
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