Why can't we suspend disbelief in real life? That's a change. We can feel for the characters in a box set, or a book, even if we've seen/read it before. I watched the episode Tamerlane from the first series of Madam Secretary (CBS, 2014-) last night, and - omitting spoilers - felt for the characters. The emotional pull is expertly put together, of course, but so's a sunset (discuss). I'm re-reading A Closed And Common Orbit by Becky Chambers, sequel to The Long Way To A Small, Angry Planet, (self-published, 2014, and then Hodder & Stoughton) and - again, omitting spoilers - I really want Pepper to find what she's looking for. I've even read it before, re-reading it to orient myself because there's a third book now, but I'm engaged.
I can slip into belief so easily. But that's not allowed - and difficult to do - in real life. Looking out now at a hazy distance, the blue sky just lightly dusted with cloud, the water shimmering and the boats all still at their moorings, I could quite happily believe ... in a lot of things. I'm open to all that (and/or I want to be; not sure). Until a few generations back, my ancestors would have accepted ... a lot of things without question, and got on with their lives. Watching a bee bounce impossibly from bloom to bloom of the purple plant outside my window (no idea what it is), I would be really happy to accept without question that small round buzzy things can fly. Bees came before aerodynamics; they're exempt, in my book.
I've just put the words <how do bees fly> into Google. And what I can reveal is: a lot of effort has gone into "debunking the myth" that bees "violate the laws of physics" by daring to fly - I'm quoting from the first of my 6,160,000 search responses. Six million. Why? I was happy with that myth. Is it really compulsory not to have myths in our lives - outside the accepted boundaries of fiction? So often we depict the scene where somebody says to somebody else: "It's all real," whether the "it" is vampires, aliens, ghosts, the supernatural in general, even terminators. We kind of want it.
But we won't let ourselves have it. So my question is: if we want to live in a world where, say, the old gods are rallying against the new gods (and they're all American Gods, Neil Gaiman, Headline, 2001), what's stopping us? It never stopped us before. We open our minds in so many ways nowadays, and we prize open-mindedness, acceptance, tolerance across cultures - so why have we so firmly shut that out?
I can slip into belief so easily. But that's not allowed - and difficult to do - in real life. Looking out now at a hazy distance, the blue sky just lightly dusted with cloud, the water shimmering and the boats all still at their moorings, I could quite happily believe ... in a lot of things. I'm open to all that (and/or I want to be; not sure). Until a few generations back, my ancestors would have accepted ... a lot of things without question, and got on with their lives. Watching a bee bounce impossibly from bloom to bloom of the purple plant outside my window (no idea what it is), I would be really happy to accept without question that small round buzzy things can fly. Bees came before aerodynamics; they're exempt, in my book.
I've just put the words <how do bees fly> into Google. And what I can reveal is: a lot of effort has gone into "debunking the myth" that bees "violate the laws of physics" by daring to fly - I'm quoting from the first of my 6,160,000 search responses. Six million. Why? I was happy with that myth. Is it really compulsory not to have myths in our lives - outside the accepted boundaries of fiction? So often we depict the scene where somebody says to somebody else: "It's all real," whether the "it" is vampires, aliens, ghosts, the supernatural in general, even terminators. We kind of want it.
But we won't let ourselves have it. So my question is: if we want to live in a world where, say, the old gods are rallying against the new gods (and they're all American Gods, Neil Gaiman, Headline, 2001), what's stopping us? It never stopped us before. We open our minds in so many ways nowadays, and we prize open-mindedness, acceptance, tolerance across cultures - so why have we so firmly shut that out?
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