{"id":1857,"date":"2014-09-28T14:21:22","date_gmt":"2014-09-28T22:21:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/?p=1857"},"modified":"2014-09-28T14:21:22","modified_gmt":"2014-09-28T22:21:22","slug":"six-impossible-things-before-breakfast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/?p=1857","title":{"rendered":"Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lewis Carroll<\/a> wrote two books in the mid-late 19th century, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland<\/em> and Alice’s Adventures Through the Looking Glass<\/em>. (Lewis Carroll was his pen name; his real name was Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. Interestingly, a number of authors have had what\u2019s called a nom de plume<\/em>, a pen name.)<\/p>\n

Disney conflated those tw0 \u201cAlice\u201d books into one movie. He left out many episodes and mixed a bit of one story in with another. In the second Through the Looking-Glass<\/em> book, one of the themes is how everything works backwards. Another theme in the story is that chess pieces come alive. So in the fifth chapter, Alice meets the White Queen\u2014a bit of a dippy lady who thinks backwards. Anyway, one special line charmed me and is relevant here:<\/p>\n

The queen announces her age as one hundred and one years old. Alice replies, \u201cI can\u2019t believe that!\u201d Can’t you?’ the Queen said in a pitying tone. ‘Try again: draw a long breath, and shut your eyes.’ Alice laughed. ‘There’s no use trying,” she said; “one can’t believe impossible things.” To this the White Queen responded\u2014and this is the punch-line: \u201c’I daresay you haven’t had much practice. When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast!<\/strong>\u201d<\/p>\n

On the face of it, it\u2019s nonsense. In our own era, it\u2019s creative thinking. It\u2019s as if I invited you to dare imagine six impossible inventions\u2014we live in an era of inventions, really. I mentioned this in my first lecture on imagination development for the Fall 2014 session of our Senior University Georgetown. This lifelong learning program has been going on now for about 17 years, and there are 6 weeks of lectures Fall and early Spring.<\/p>\n

Imagination Development<\/strong><\/p>\n

My point in this series is that although everyone has an imagination, few really use it more than a little bit. It can be and should be exercised and our own era is about redeeming this potential for our own creativity\u2014personally, job-wise, and for the positive evolution of our culture.<\/p>\n

The class introduces some of these themes and then in the second lecture, explores how cartoonists and comic strip artists use surrealistic elements, imaginative elements, to stretch our minds. The third level extends this and explores how elves and fairies and such have been used as a theme in many cartoons, and what is the function of these kinds of imaginary beings, anyway?<\/p>\n

In the fourth lecture I don my guise as part elf, capable of traveling among the dimensions, much as the \u201cDreamweaver\u201d does in the Disney World \u201cImagination\u201d ride. It\u2019s a stretching of the imagination, that\u2019s all, though I confess I sneak in some mind-boggles here and there.<\/p>\n

In the fifth lecture I sorta kinda come down to earth talking about myth in human consciousness, its function, its varieties. And then in early November I\u2019ll talk about how imagination can be stretched in many practical ways. Well, that\u2019s enough for now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lewis Carroll wrote two books in the mid-late 19th century, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Alice’s Adventures Through the Looking Glass. (Lewis Carroll was his pen name; his real name was Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. Interestingly, a number of authors have had what\u2019s called a nom de plume, a pen name.) Disney conflated those tw0 \u201cAlice\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,15,25,26,37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1857","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-events","category-favoritethings","category-play-and-spontaneity","category-psychology","category-world-of-almost-real"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1857"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1857"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1857\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1858,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1857\/revisions\/1858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}