I should've been born closer to the Equator. No matter how long or hot the Summer months have been, I hate to see them fade away.
And (around here at least), they're fading fast. The nights are colder. The days are damper. The dog still wakes me by her clock, the sunrise, but that first light is coming later and later.
Today, however was a throwback to and we got out early to enjoy it.
Only to see so few people doing the same.
Oh, they were out there. Talking or texting on their phones. Sitting on their front steps tapping away at a tablet. Cruising through the park, searching for Pokemon.
Now, I'm not saying that there isn't a creative element to many of those activities. But I've begun to wonder what filling our lives with somebody else's imagination does to our own.
Maybe it's no different than me finding a weathered copy of "Tarzan The Ape Man" and spending most of a long ago Summer reading it in a treehouse, while imagining I was in deepest, darkest Africa.
Maybe today's airborne pixels approximate the beams of projector light in the Roxy Theatre or The Broadway that inspired me to seek a career creating the same kind of experiences.
But somehow I don't see kids putting down their devices and then continuing the story, the game or the input they're received in another way.
I hope I'm wrong. But sometimes I think we're losing the ability to imagine, to see a story as parable for something in reality instead of a literal stand-alone tale.
Canadian writer W.O. Mitchell has a wonderful book entitled "The Vanishing Point" which includes a great sequence where a kid in a one room classroom transforms a boring exercise about drawing perspective into an abandoned exhibition of imagination.
I just don't want to see people lose that.
And neither does filmmaker Brandon Oldenberg, who has created a sweet little cartoon about discovering the power of one's imagination and "Taking Flight".
I hope it fires your imagination.
Enjoy Your Sunday.
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Taking Flight from Moonbot Studios on Vimeo.
1 comment:
I agree with it aLL Jim. I find it hard to source my creativity and "play" these days. I worry about all the children with their 'devices' and how locked into them they are. Just yesterday on my way to a move "The Beattles: Eight Days A Week", I had to stop on an unmarked road to let a mother and her son j-walk, while the mother was ahead of the kid who had his head buried in the phone. First of all she was teaching him unsafe road crossing, and second she was not very interested in his safety... a little sad me thinks...
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