I often wonder how much imagination influences our election choices. Ever since my earlier days as an undergraduate Fine Art Major I have known “imagination” is a double-edged and very sharp sword to wield. When expressed in tangible form and used as a tool of communication, art, in actuality a fairly free from risk arena to share one’s thoughts and inner secrets wrapped within centuries old traditional boundaries and with a little updating and imagination has allowed us to watch a guy who looks like he always has a bad headache (as it turns out, Jackson Pollack always did) pouring paint from a can onto a canvas and call it, well, art.
Not that this is a bad thing. As the traditional mostly portraits or sectarian scenes intended to make the patron feel better about themselves by hanging commissioned paintings in their homes, matching the color of the upholstery if so pre-arranged, realism and formality gave way to an appreciation of the abstract all in the quest for considering possibilities if not outright pushing them into existence.
How far can you go? As far as your imagination minus the physical limitations and impediments inherent in every medium of expression can take you. I like to think of this process as getting it out of your head and onto paper, canvas, into digital form or whatever area of the creative process you, the artist, would choose as your mode of expression.
The crossing over from the ethereal realm of the mind and into solid form for all to see, your inner thoughts, fears, desires, for you see artists are in their own way basically brave souls who are willing to expose a part of their being in an effort to connect and find similarly situated souls in what is often a match made in a very dark room of a very dark corner of the mind.
In other words, you can invent the best, or manifest the absolute worst of worlds. All of which you, the creator, live within and are now sharing with us, within. It all starts and ends with you. Upon first viewing, the key question for me, is does the artist see or not see a better tomorrow?
If the answer is “not” then I tend to shy away from the work as I am not a big believer in shared pain being offered as an ameliorative experience worth having, considering the amount of inner chaos and turmoil already inside, I dare say I need not a drop more, and just so we are clear, I am not a fan of now would I ever attend someone else’s pity party.
Picasso, you deal with Guernica. Do I tell you my problems? You the sadistic womanizer and all around roué who drank a lot of vino and painted pretty pictures for a living. As I said above, life is as easy or as hard as you can imagine it.
I will admit that when the same logic is applied to our current political discourse, the GQP has shown a great deal of imagination in creating the unreal as reality in what is nothing more than a cynical attempt to rope in those folks who in most instances, have a preordained so to speak penchant to obey authority without question, regardless of whether it is even possible to build an Ark of Animals (what is a cubit anyway?) capable of surviving side-by-side, without the lions eating the antelopes till the end of a rain or storm, of existential consequences. You know, stuff that happens all the time in this, a time of non-Biblical miracles and all. Anyone talked to a burning bush lately? I didn’t think so.
Yet the modern GQP that wants to take us back to a stone-age theocratic as all get out philosophy of life and politics, most notably excluding and skipping over the benefits of rational thought and reason as a motivator in determining policy, continue to posit a world that I find could only lead to the most divisive, desperate, and dystopian of futures.
We have already seen their willingness to bow to the so-called divine intervention former guy’s golden calf, graven image. If it “triggered” the philistine democrats so much the better. Throw in a few assault rifles for show, and voila! Today’s modern Q looking a great deal like what I would think are their closet role models and heroes, the Taliban, are well on their way to creating a new age of pain and suffering for all but the truest of the true believers. Tell me I’m wrong.
We have plenty of precedent for being creative, destructive and wrong. Remember the Spanish Inquisition? The iron maiden and the rack? Very creative. Problem being these methods of torture were used to elicit confessions of the unholy, to scare, and on occasion, cutting to the chase and inflict no muss no fuss death.
Who among us would cast the first stone? I think we have our answer. Someone who thinks throwing stones at their neighbors, brothers and sisters, is the way to salvation, because someone in authority told them to and unfortunately, from the word go, wrong.
I mention all of this today as I continue to see a growing group of Americans who wonder, will we ever be able to fix the damage to our government, to our soul and American psyches done by the former guy and his cult of whatever in the name of maintaining power and money is good for us, and good for you.
See? When bereft of the ridiculous, the culture wars, the we are losing our way of systematic white privilege as the anointed way of life and must do anything to keep our “heritage” intact, including storming the Capitol Building as part of a plot to overthrow the actual duly elected and certified president of the United States, and something about a kraken. There you have it.
Fostering a future reality on the basis of faith, belief and unreality, with a dark end of days scenario, possibly a race war, is a terrible fate to wish upon anyone, that is anyone not trying to avoid eternal hell fire in the next life and wants to see a bigger, better and brighter right here and right now and is willing to work in a joint effort to bring about positive change and progress by helping, not shunning, those who need our help the most while continuing to be humbled by the gifts we have been given.
In other words, those who cannot imagine a better tomorrow will never see a better tomorrow, unless we who are willing to use our imaginations, to innovate, renovate, remove, and replace the nightmare of the last four years in preparation of the next four years that judging by Biden’s first 100 days in office, with the wind, and perhaps if he is willing, with God’s blessing at our backs.
Oh, that part about anything you imagine can be made true, that’s true. So, what is it going to be? My advice? Let your zest and zeal for life in this life be your guiding light for creating a better universe for all and, along the way vote appropriately. Yes, we can, and yes, we will. Admittedly we go into a world full of who knows what for such is the nature of the human condition, but you know what? I’ll be there with you, as you will be with me. How bad can that be? Forward!
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