My sister shared with me Mac Barnett's ted talk this morning. My sister is an artist and a children's librarian, as you can see by my new favorite picture of her to the right. She's read some of Barnett's books and I have not, but she wanted to share with me the above video because of my tendency to do things like... decorate Christmas presents for my nephew in dragon scale paper if the book is about a dragon, or give him "The Skull of Truth" by Bruce Coville and send it alongside a box with an "actual" skull inside. (I once even made a truffula tree seed to send along with The Lorax, but it then occurred to me how disappointed and horrified I would have been as a kid if I had planted the seed and it didn't grow. Also I made it out of plastic, which defeats the environmental morals in the book...) My sister also remembers the time in my life when I would ring a sleigh bell just to make sure I still really believed in Santa, because I read about that in The Polar Express.
The point being, I look for doorways into magical realms, too. I have always wanted magic to be tangible. As a kid, the possibility that magic wasn't real was truly frightening, and very, very sad to me. I would hunt for unicorns and fairies and I would never find them - it seemed to me like science had already explained everything before I got to it. Then I read Bruce Coville's introduction to one of his volumes of collected stories, and he promised me that magic is real - he didn't promise me that I would one day meet a unicorn (although I have done that) and he didn't promise me that I would play with fairies in the woods (although I've done that too), he told me that ordinary things can be magic. For example, the simple fact that he can have a thought, put some markings on a paper, and I can look at those markings and have the same (or at least similar) thought. Bam - the magic of reading overwhelmed me, and the idea that creativity, art, myth, and magic are all the same thing started to grow.
I was hooked on Mac's speech when I first noticed the venn diagram behind him at the beginning of the video. The two circles, "Truth" and "Lies", overlap, and in the middle is what Mac refers to as "wonder"... I recognize that space, because I call it "home." I work every day to create live-action sequences for audiences to willingly suspend their disbelief into. As an actor, you put your brain in that "wonder" space every day - you know that what you're doing in the rehearsal room is a "lie" but you have to believe in it, somehow, because you are hyper aware that it's something more than a lie... it is someone else's truth. As a director, the play goes sour when it doesn't look like truth. And I don't mean "when it doesn't look real" - because reality and truth are different things!! Directors first establish the rules of the reality to be presented, and then adhere to them or break them for the sake of the story. Art, myth, creativity, magic... all the same thing. (Wonderland, Neverland, Fantasia, Narnia, The Matrix... also, all facets of the same place. Where I live half the time. And some times I get paid to live there!) This is something I hold close to my heart and it is incredibly hard to explain... but artists like Mac, like my sister, like me, we get it somehow.
So yes, magic is real. I have been sitting in an audience of children who all know this, too. They know that Artex is a guy in a suit, while they also are consumed by the sadness of the swamp. They know that if the princess doesn't get kissed, she will die, but the actor will be okay. And they know that Peter Pan can sprinkle fairy dust to make Wendy and the boys fly out the nursery room window, but they don't try it at home. I live in the space where flight is possible, where danger is real, and where ordinary people can be absolutely anything. I don't just find magic - I (and the audience) make it happen.
The point being, I look for doorways into magical realms, too. I have always wanted magic to be tangible. As a kid, the possibility that magic wasn't real was truly frightening, and very, very sad to me. I would hunt for unicorns and fairies and I would never find them - it seemed to me like science had already explained everything before I got to it. Then I read Bruce Coville's introduction to one of his volumes of collected stories, and he promised me that magic is real - he didn't promise me that I would one day meet a unicorn (although I have done that) and he didn't promise me that I would play with fairies in the woods (although I've done that too), he told me that ordinary things can be magic. For example, the simple fact that he can have a thought, put some markings on a paper, and I can look at those markings and have the same (or at least similar) thought. Bam - the magic of reading overwhelmed me, and the idea that creativity, art, myth, and magic are all the same thing started to grow.
I was hooked on Mac's speech when I first noticed the venn diagram behind him at the beginning of the video. The two circles, "Truth" and "Lies", overlap, and in the middle is what Mac refers to as "wonder"... I recognize that space, because I call it "home." I work every day to create live-action sequences for audiences to willingly suspend their disbelief into. As an actor, you put your brain in that "wonder" space every day - you know that what you're doing in the rehearsal room is a "lie" but you have to believe in it, somehow, because you are hyper aware that it's something more than a lie... it is someone else's truth. As a director, the play goes sour when it doesn't look like truth. And I don't mean "when it doesn't look real" - because reality and truth are different things!! Directors first establish the rules of the reality to be presented, and then adhere to them or break them for the sake of the story. Art, myth, creativity, magic... all the same thing. (Wonderland, Neverland, Fantasia, Narnia, The Matrix... also, all facets of the same place. Where I live half the time. And some times I get paid to live there!) This is something I hold close to my heart and it is incredibly hard to explain... but artists like Mac, like my sister, like me, we get it somehow.
So yes, magic is real. I have been sitting in an audience of children who all know this, too. They know that Artex is a guy in a suit, while they also are consumed by the sadness of the swamp. They know that if the princess doesn't get kissed, she will die, but the actor will be okay. And they know that Peter Pan can sprinkle fairy dust to make Wendy and the boys fly out the nursery room window, but they don't try it at home. I live in the space where flight is possible, where danger is real, and where ordinary people can be absolutely anything. I don't just find magic - I (and the audience) make it happen.