Flip The Blanket

Only those who attempt the absurd will achieve the impossible.

M. C. Escher
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Hello Ernie
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This is the 1,841st edition of Vagabond Journeys. I've been writing and posting one almost every day since 2006. To the world at large it would be known as an exercise in futility. Yesterday I had only 15 known readers when I should have hundreds, thousands. So why do I do it?

Love is one answer. I love to feel my imagination wake up and start working. I love to feel that swirl of ideas around my head. I love it when the natural flow of inspiration brings up a concept better than the one I thought of on my own.

Those are selfish things. Need is another one. I need to share my thoughts, ideas, enthusiasm for living and my life experience with other people. Of what use is a senior citizen if he doesn't open up the trunk, go through everything, throw out the old shoes, wasted love notes and foolish dreams, then bundle together the true values of decades of a life lived.

Hope is another reason why I don't give up. As an actor I have played for an audience of one and an audience of five thousand. The performance was always the same as at other times, the same commitment, the same joy. Why does the violinist return to the same concertos he has played before? Why does the golfer take his clubs out to the course even in the cold weather? Because every swing is a finger poked into the magic world of perfection. The golf swing, the music, my writing aren't perfect, but there is always the possibility that one day it will be.

Despair is another reason why to keep writing. An artist is one who must create, who must let imagination loose from any attempt to cage it, who must feel the blessing of inspiration and recognize it when it comes. For me, who lives in a cultural vacuum, I must create the only atmosphere in which I can survive.

The urge and search for perfection may seem like an absurdity to the rational mind. Yet the greatest achievers of the human race were those who did the impossible. I may get the readers I deserve some day, I may not. I may get close to perfection some day, I may not. But I will grab one side of the blanket with the other artists who are willing to try the absurd and flip truth and beauty into the sky and see haw high we can make it fly.

DB - Vagabond Journeys
Never Give Up
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Reaching The Star

If you have built your castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put foundations under them.

Thoreau
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Hello Mark
***************
Every great achievement of the human being has begun with a dream, a magical day dream, an impossible dream, a castle in the air, a "pie in the sky." And along with the dream sometimes comes hope. The unfortunate thing is that often it stops with hope, with a big maybe, but with the depressing idea that whatever it is isn't possible, so forget it.

When all the blather, bluster, ideologies and idiocies have passed into history and basically forgotten, what will be known to be the really important description of the 20th Century? I think it will be space travel. In the last hundred years we have witnessed the emergence of aircraft as the most popular form of transportation for long trips in short periods of time. And the hundred years were topped off by space travel, men and women flying into outer space, and living there. The International Space Station - the castle in the sky, as Thoreau put it.

We have seen men walking on the moon. It was an impossible dream for many centuries. That is something, I think, should be considered and never forgotten about. How many millions of people. for thousands of years, have stared up at the moon and wondered what it would be like to be there. All of it was accomplished by those with the intelligence and imagination to build the foundations under it. Many said it was impossible for man to go to the moon. If we can walk on the moon we can walk on other planets. Anything is possible to the one who, like Don Quixote, puts his armor on, takes his spear, saddles up and chases after the star.


To dream the impossible dream ...
To fight the unbeatable foe ...
To bear with unbearable sorrow ...
To run where the brave dare not go ...
To right the unrightable wrong ...
To love pure and chaste from afar ...
To try when your arms are too weary ...
To reach the unreachable star ...
(Joe Darion)

There are hundreds of reasons why a thing can't be done. There is one good one for why it can, and that's the doing of it. Someone once said "Imagination is intelligence having fun." No matter how difficult and sorrowing it is, no matter how hostile the territory, no matter how long it takes, don't fold your dream up and tuck it into the bureau drawer. Leave it lying around, underfoot, in your way. And sooner or later your imagination will grab onto the right foundations to make it be. The impossible dream is yours, so is the unreachable star.

Dana Bate - The Vagabond
Never Give Up
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This invitation is still open for anyone and everyone to post an entry of their own on my journal, Vagabond Journeys http://vagabondjourneys.blogspot.com/.

A new year is upon us and since it is a time for celebrations, remembrances, resolutions and plans for the future I think people have things to say.

Not to take away from the postings on your own journals, but to add to the joy of my own is why I invite you to write for me.

I want to read what your thoughts are about this magical time of the year. This invitation is open to everyone: Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Pagans, Agnostics, Atheists and the Uncertain or the Confused. Tell me your thoughts on any subject you wish.

There are no limits in regard to length. The only limitation is that, for reasons so far unexplained to me, my blog does not take photographs, animations, videos or pictures of any kind. I deal in words.

Please accept my invitation. Send your entry to my email address dbdacoba@aol.com I will copy and paste it into my journal and it will be displayed promptly. You may sign your name or not as you wish, and you may leave a link to your blog or your email or not, as you wish. I will do NO editing or censoring. Eloquence is not necessary, mind or heart or both is all.

I have 13 Guest Authors so far. Check them out.
All are welcome. Admission is free.

DB - The Vagabond
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No Yawning

The best way to live is by not knowing what will happen to you by the end of the day.

Daniel Barthelme
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Hello Jen
*********************
Someone recently remarked that my life is not boring. How can a man who lives alone, in an attic apartment, in a small and quiet town, with no family, no pets and hardly any visitors not live a boring life? How can that be, especially since he spent his working life in the entertainment business, as an actor, one of the most interesting, exciting and action filled professions there is and one which is never boring? Why isn't he bored to a perpetual yawn now?

I have known people in my days who were expert at planning out their lives so well that they knew where they would be at any minute during the day. They would keep to strict schedules, were dependably prompt and never deviated from the discipline of their lives. That's a noble way to live, I suppose, but it doesn't allow for much improvisation, adventure or whimsy. And when carried to an extreme it tends to invoke rules for buttoning shirts and tying shoes.

"I always do my laundry at 11 Saturday morning."
"Why not do it Friday night instead?"
"Oh no, Friday night is my time for doing the crossword puzzle."

It gets ridiculous. Some people will tell you that if they didn't carefully plan out the day little would ever get done, and I agree with that. Any serious actor knows time must be set aside for memorizing lines and developing the script. When rehearsal and performance times come the actor must be there and ready to work. But if it weren't for the freedom of expression and imagination, the unexpected moments of creativity, the bright light of inspiration that suddenly flicks on, the actors performance would be boring. The arts when properly done are never boring.

So why aren't I bored? Why isn't my life boring? Although I like a good healthy yawn now and then, I'm not an authority on boredom. My life in theatre taught me curiosity, imagination and, best of all, enthusiasm. It also taught me to respect the unexpected.

When the stranger wanders into your life, when the door you always go through is suddenly locked and when the steady rhythms of your day become syncopated smile, boredom has just fled out the window like an escaping racoon.

If you can embrace with enthusiasm the ever new, ever changing story of your life it can only get better.

Dana B - The Vagabond
Never Give Up
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Art And Reality

We need men who can dream of things that never were.

President John Kennedy
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Whenever I experience an original work of art I want to be astonished. Whether it's a song, a dance, a picture or a story, I want the artist to take me someplace I've never been before, somewhere beyond knowledge, beyond my knowledge. I want to see even more perceptively than ever a challenge to the so-called authority of realism. I want existence redefined for me. I want to see a new world, or an old world in a new place. I want to see the stars rearranged. I want to see something that has never been become a reality.

Is such art possible? Or is it something beyond art? A new art perhaps. Will it be possible some day for an artist to eliminate the technically limited and create purely from imagination, to make the image become reality by the imagining of it? William James wrote "Human beings by changing the inner attitudes of their minds can change the outer aspects of their lives."

If so it could only be done by someone pure and innocent who can imagine only the beautiful and true. Such a one would be an ubermensch of an artist. I believe it is not outside of the realm of possibility.

As an artist I know, as every artist knows, there are moments when the creative process seems to be going on by itself, when the artist is merely an observer of it. Those are the moments when I feel that there is another character, another intelligence at work and it is between imagination and the art, having freed itself from the middle man, me, the artist, At those times it is interesting to ponder who or what is the real artist. the real creator.

Now ponder what that same mysterious process would be like in the realms of nation building, invention, exploration and discovery. That is a question that has puzzled some inspired philosophers over the years. Do we believe what we see or do we see what we believe? Is reality what we think it is or does it become what we think it is? And is it possible to change the reality we see, creating a new reality by how we imagine it. This all may seem like the stuff of science fiction, but so was going to the moon a few decades ago.

DB - Vagabond Journeys
Never give up
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SUMMER QUESTION

It's a long, hot, sticky summer, so here's a hot, sticky question for you. Don't let the recent New York State decision rob you of your thunder.

Same sex marriage. Should it be legal or not? If so, why? If not, why not?

dbdacoba@aol.com

13 answers so far.

You have until the last day of summer, but don't dally.
I eagerly await your answer.

DB
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Minds Wide Open

The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.

Henry Miller
*********************
Geology and drawing are two of the most important and most memorable courses of study of my experience, because they both taught me not only to observe but also to think.

Intuition is a valuable tool in those two disciplines as it is in any instruction of value. Intuition is one of the thruways to imagination. Observation is the starting place of all learning, doing and creating, the first step toward the silent world which is only symbolized by such things as rocks and drawings.
Immanuel Kant wrote "Sense is the faculty of intuition in the presence of an object. Imagination is intuition without the presence of the object."

Some rocks are very beautiful (lapidists deal in them) while others are very ordinary looking, just a rock. But all of them have stories to tell. It is interesting to examine a rock to determine it's age and chemical, cellular composition. But whenever I hold a rock in my hand I realize I am holding millions of years of history.

A mystic I used to know once gave me a rock she had pick up off the side of Mount Olympus in Greece, the mountain of the ancient gods. She put it in her purse and carried it all the way back specifically to give to me. I kept that rock for many years until someone found it and threw it out. It was just a rock, after all, it didn't belong in the house. So somewhere on the ground in Westchester County, New York is a bit of Mount Olympus.

One day I discovered an outcropping of stratified rock sticking up from the ground at an angle and pointing at the sky. I knew it was stratified, which meant it was made of layers of sediment, probably laid down by centuries of rain, baked in the hot sun, hardened into solid rock, then covered over by other layers, twisted into an arc by volcanic action of the earth and then eroded by rain and wind to it's current state. As I looked at it I tried to imagine what it must have looked like when it first covered the surrounding earth, and what it was like as a mammoth spectacle after the earth had buckled it. I also imagined the real possibility that somewhere, near or far, one could find the other end of that rainbow, a chunk of stratified rock jutting out of the ground and pointing in the opposite direction back to itself.

In upper Manhattan, around 200th Street, there's a boulder. It's surrounded very closely by houses and it's a prime piece of real estate. But ti's protected from developers because it's a natural wonder. It was set down there centuries ago during the ice age by a gigantic glacier that traveled through.

There is another boulder of comparable size along the Boulder Loop Trail in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. That one is surrounded by trees and is also protected because of the National Forest it's in. I wonder if the two boulders are related. They were both probably set down by the same glacier.

Michael Chekhov (1891 - 1955) was the nephew of Anton Chekhov, the great Russian playwright. He was an actor who also taught and wrote on acting. One of his theories was called the PG, which stands for Psychological Gesture. It's not the kind of gesture such as pointing a finger or shrugging of shoulders but a full body gesture. With it an actor can convey the inner life of a character even though presenting a false face to the other characters on the stage. The way a person stands or sits can tell a lot about how that person feels or thinks.

I studied life drawing at various locations around New York City. When I first began I struggled with getting the proportions right of the human figure, then learning how to articulate the bones and muscles in different poses. After a few years I began to observe something else. The models weren't actors, most of them, but whenever they would drape themselves into a pose for a period of time they would strike a psychological gesture. Each figure, each pose had a story to tell. Though unconscious, perhaps, on the part of the model it was a clear statement of some inner life. My imagination began to provide histories of these people, current events in their lives, their fears and dreams. My drawings took on a more interesting quality and were more enjoyable to do and to see.

On the stage when a character enters the scene he is coming from somewhere. The actor is coming from the wings, but the character is coming from a specific place not seen on the stage. The actor has to know where his character is coming from, and he does know because he decides, through observation and imagination.

Imagination is creative intuition. By careful observation of all the things we come across in the world, from boulders to blades of grass, and by intelligent thinking about them, the mysteries of life unfold themselves on every level, in every place.

DB - The Vagabond
Never give up.
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I recommend that you read "Voracious Details" at http://shatteredprose.blogspot.com/
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LAST DAY OF SPRING !!!
Get in under the wire, before the door closes and you're left out in the heat.

SPRING QUESTION
(This is not a contest)

Come on. 12 diverse and interesting answers so far. Where's yours?

NASA has planned to send a two man mission on an 18 month trip to the planet Mars. It would take 6 months for the astronauts to get there and after 6 months of exploration another 6 months to return.

Should they do it and why, and if not, why not?

dbdacoba@aol.com

I eagerly await your answer.

DB
******************

What Do You Think?

Don't be a blueprint. Be an original

Roy Acuff
******************
"Well, that's the way they did it in the movie."

Something I've never understood is why some actors and directors insist on producing a play to look like it was in the movie. Directors will search for an actor who looks like the actor in the film and it doesn't much matter how good he is as long as he looks the part, or the part as it was on the screen. And I've known actors who will go through elaborate make up and hair styling to resemble someone from a film.

I've played "A Christmas Carol" a number of times and often there was a fresh view of the story, but sometimes the director wanted to reproduce the film. How stupid! If I can deliver a reading of a line that is fresher, more interesting and more relevant than the fellow in the film why should I be forced to do it his way?

I lost an audition for Big Daddy in "Cat On A Hot Tin Roof" because I wasn't fat. Burl Ives, who played it in the film, was fat. But nowhere in the script does it call for Big Daddy to be fat. I went on to play him in another theatre and nobody minded that I wasn't fat.

I've also observed the same imitative trait in speech. I've gone into the first day of rehearsal and heard some actor trying to sound like Marlon Brando, or Al Pacino, or Rex Harrison.

Discoveries are not made through imitation. Once you choose to be like, look like or sound like someone else you put aside creativity and imagination, two of the greatest gifts a human being can carry into life.

I don't care if it's a performance of a play or a great piece of music, if it's a garden, a chocolate cake or a rock band. I don't want to see or hear what someone else did. I want to know what you think.

DB - The Vagabond
(Never give up.)
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SPRING QUESTION
(This is not a contest)

Come on. 11 diverse and interesting answers so far. Where's yours?

NASA has planned to send a two man mission on an 18 month trip to the planet Mars. It would take 6 months for the astronauts to get there and after 6 months of exploration another 6 months to return.

Should they do it and why, and if not, why not?

dbdacoba@aol.com

I eagerly await your answer.

DB
******************

Look At That

Imagination is the highest kite one can fly.

Lauren Bacall
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Do you trust your instincts? Probably. Do you trust your intuition? Maybe. How about your ingenuity? Most likely. But do you trusty your imagination? Why not?

Imagination works in two ways. One is what happens when the mind "wanders" and you are what's known as lost in thought. At such a time you visit various places, ideas, memories, doubts, fears, worries, visions, spectacles, hopes, waking dreams. Then sometimes the wandering imagination finds a trail and follows it for a while. That wayfaring imagination can be a very pleasant experience or a negative one.

Creative imagination comes with a ballet slipper or a test tube. It is the potter;s clay, the carpenter's wood, the smith's metal, the poet's word. When the dial clicks on the right number an idea shows up into sight out of the fog of maybes and might bes. The creative thinker takes that idea and gives it a bath in his imagination. It is molded and fashioned by him, held up to the light and maybe hammered a little bit. That is the process of discovery and creativity and when it goes on one is truly lifted into a special place in the universe all his own. Out of the mundane into the spiritual, it's one of life's greatest joys.

DB - The Vagabond
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WINTER QUESTION
(This is not a contest)

What was the most significant event that happened in 2010?

dbdacoba@aol.com

Only 2 responses so far

I await your answer.
DB
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Consider The Sax

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.

Marcel Proust
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The world is indeed a strange place.

Yesterday I went for a walk in order to purchase something I needed. The walk takes about 25 minutes. It is hard for me to walk even in the best weather but it was below freezing with a strong, bitter wind blowing almost constantly. About half way to my destination there is a pocket park which consists of a row of iron benches surrounding a stone structure. In the warm weather that structure is a circular pit with a fountain in the middle. It's a pleasant little place and in the summer the squirrels come and visit, looking for a handout, and the birds will perch on the edge and sometimes dip in to refresh themselves in the water. But now the fountain is covered over by a cloth which is tied down from the wind. It has the appearance of a ghostly object mysteriously sticking up from the empty pit around it.

I sat on one of the benches to rest and must have seemed to any passer as a spectral object myself, bundled up in my overcoat, sitting where no sane person would expect to be sitting in that weather.

I knew it was a fountain because I have sat there many a summer's day. But I wondered what someone would think of it who had never seen it uncovered and gently splashing with water. It resembled an unexplainable, mystical shrine of some pagan variety. One would have to imagine what it was and what it did.

Consider a saxophone. If you had never seen one before, never saw anyone playing it or knew what it was called, do you think you would identify it as a musical instrument. It's a twisty metal thing that comes to a point at one end, folds out into a well with a hole in it at the other end and in between are a bunch of holes, looking like an octopus's tentacle, with covers over them. Would your imagination tell you it was for making music or would it devise a different use, such as a planter for vines.

I had a friend who liked to visit me during my radio shift when I was a broadcaster. She would sit in front of the consol and just stare at the knobs, switches, buttons, meters and the strange inert but dangerous looking thing that stuck up into her face. She would ask me what this thing was for and what that thing did. She knew that the end result was a radio broadcast but that consol might just as well have been a wall in an ancient Egyptian tomb.

What about a foreign language? If you saw the characters of Hebrew or Arabic for the first time and didn't know it was a language would you imagine those funny looking squiggles and curves would render spoken sound, or letters, words, sentences, ideas?

I, like most people, have been fascinated with the strange objects of the world and, like my friend at the radio station, I want to know what this thing is, what it does and what it's for.

Once you know what a thing is and what it does you can start asking why. That's a delicious task for the imagination. What makes the water spout up, how does a saxophone work, why is a radio station consol built that way, why do those particular shapes make sounds and letters. I have an essay that attempts to describe a metaphysical meaning behind each of the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Are there similar meanings behind the fountain, the saxophone and the radio consol?

Einstein said that he wasn't particularly intelligent but that he was just very curious. Imagination and curiosity are the tools we all possess that can turn the ordinary, every day, hum drum things in the world into brand new landscapes.

DB - The Vagabond
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Weekend Contest

Here we are a few days into Winter and I still don't have a Winter Question. I have some ideas but I open the meeting to anyone who would like to propose a good question to intrigue and inspire the readers to come up with interesting answers.
Thank you.
DB
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Visions Of The Night

Always know where the back door is.

Bate
*************
Today I read an article about a 7 year old girl who was frightened by a picture of the angle of death she had seen in school. It frightened her so much she couldn't sleep at night. As soon as the lights went out she saw the image again and for several knights she would leave her room and get into bed with her mother.

The mother is a writer and one day suggested to the girl tht she imagine herself to be powerful and had powerful friends around her to do battle with the angel of death and end up putting a funny bright red wig on it. That worked and the girl was never frightened with that image again.

The little girl's imagination took care of the monster.

Two nights ago I had a nightmare. I was standing ina room with a group of men. the room was packed with us. There was no room to move, we were jammed in solid, shoulder to chest, back to front. No one could move. There were no windows, the room was stuffy, the only way out was a door that was locked. I don't like closed spaces anyway. I would rather take a train than to fly. I hate tight confined spaces. I panicked and woke up.

I carried the fear of that dream with me all day. Yesterday evening I tried to imagine what I would do if that event actually occurred. In my imagination I hollered out to ask if anyone could pick a lock. One man said he could but he wasn't near the door. Struggling for a long time through this crowd of men he finally reached the door and opened it. There were too many men to make a panicked run, a stampede. There was a lot pf pushing and shoving but eventually we all got out. It was a great relief. That night I slept peacefully. The only truth to the whole thing was my fear. The event never happened.

My imagination took care of the monster.

DB - The Vagabond
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AUTUMN QUESTION

(This is not a contest.)

At what event of the past do you wish you could be present? Why?

8 responses so far.

dbdacoba@aol.com

Thank you.
DB
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An Acting Lesson

A great teacher is one who realizes that he himself is also a student and whose goal is not dictate the answers, but to stimulate the students' curiosity enough so that they go out and find the answer themselves.

Herbie Hancock
(Thank you Bruce)
*********************
I think I could be a reasonably good acting teacher if I ever had the opportunity to have a class of students over a period of time. There are no easy ways to learn acting or any art. But in the world of theatre there seem to be more charlatans than in any other art form. I have seen the results upon young people of the fraudulent training many of them have had. They face years of having to undo the damage done while getting by on talent. The few times I had a young actor under my charge I felt somewhat like a surgeon, cutting away the problems caused by other so-called teachers or by assumptions made by the student himself.

On the other hand to start fresh with a young person who really wants to learn can be an exhilarating experience. I have had a few brief chances over the years to bring a youngster out of the shadows and see the true art reveal itself.

Once, years ago I had a group of young hopefuls in a room to learn what I know. It was a large, bare room with a few simple pieces of furniture: a few folding chars, a bench, a card table. One girl had a speech she had written and learned. It was a letter to her boy friend breaking off the relationship. It was a fiction, she said, because she had no boy friend at the time.

She did the speech for the class and it was nicely done. But then I started to ask her questions. I asked her to describe the room she was in, beginning with the chair she was sitting in. I pressed her for details, what color things were, how they were shaped and any other distinctive things about them. She gradually described her bedroom, or the bedroom of her imagination. She told me what the bed covers looked like, what her desk was like and the details of everything that was on it. I asked her to think about any time that she and her boy friend had spent in the bed and try to recall it. She described the door to the closet. I asked he to think about a few items in there and to describe them. She told me of the door to the bathroom. I asked for every detail in the bathroom. She said there were two windows to the outside. I asked he to describe the shades or blinds on the windows. I asked her to see out the windows and tell me what she saw. She said there was a street below, with a fence across the way. Beyond it and in the distance train tracks. She said it was raining. Finally I asked her describe the boy she was breaking up with in as much detail as she could.

I handed her a piece of blank paper to use as the letter and said she could refer to it whenever she wanted to. Then I told her to mentally go through again all the details she had given me about where she was, what she heard out the window and even to add some facts as they occurred to her and, when she felt ready, to do the speech again.

The second time through the difference was amazing, she even wept at one point. As she was finishing she carefully folded the piece of paper and put it in her pocket. There was silence in the room until one of the other students said "Wow" and the class applauded her.

She looked a little baffled at the applause. She said she forgot there were people watching her and that she didn't feel like she was acting because she really felt it. "Of course" I said.

Everything, the room, the letter, the circumstance, the other person and her experience were all from her own creative imagination. All I did was ask questions.
It was only the beginning but it was her first real lesson in the art of acting.

DB - The Vagabond
********************
I am the minstrel knight,
with sword and harp.
with switch blade and flute.
****************************
WEEKEND PUZZLE

So get out your Scrabble set if you must.
Straighten out these titles.

AAABDILMS

AAADKMNRS

AAAEEHLLSST

AABNOSTW

AACEMNORST

ABILNSTU

ADIKLOOSTVV

AEIJKKRVY

AEJNUU

AILM

BEHIPRSTTU

(dgoo clku)
DB
***********************

Knowledge Kindling 7/03/09

We need men who can dream of things that never were.

President John Kennedy
************************
Hail !
---------------------------------
Whenever I experience an original work of art I want to be astonished. Whether it's a song, a dance, a picture or a story, I want the artist to take me someplace I've never been before, somewhere beyond knowledge, beyond my knowledge. I want to see even more perceptively than ever a challenge to the so-called authority of realism. I want existence redefined for me. I want to see a new world, or an old world in a new place. I want to see the stars rearranged. I want to see something that has never been become a reality.

Is such art possible? Or is it something beyond art? A new art perhaps. Will it be possible some day for an artist to eliminate the technically limited and create purely from imagination, to make the image become reality by the imagining of it?

If so it could only be done by someone pure and innocent who can imagine only the beautiful and true. Such a one would be an ubermensch of an artist. I believe it is not outside of the realm of possibility.

As an artist I know, as every artist knows, there are moments when the creative process seems to be going on by itself, when the artist is merely an observer of it. Those are the moments when I feel that there is another character, another intelligence at work and it is between imagination and the art, having freed itself from the middle man, me, the artist, At those times it is interesting to ponder who or what is the real artist. the real creator.

Now ponder what that same mysterious process would be like in the realms of nation building, invention, exploration and discovery. That is a question that has puzzled some inspired philosophers over the years. Do we believe what we see or do we see what we believe? Is reality what we think it is or does it become what we think it is? And is it possible to change the reality we see, creating a new reality by how we imagine it. This all may seem like the stuff of science fiction, but so was going to the moon a few decades ago.

DB - Vagabond Journeys
_____________________
TGIF - Thank God I'm Functioning
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SUMMER QUIZ

This is not a contest.



A young man out west just took home 88 million dollars from the lottery.



Whether you play the lottery or not, if you suddenly had 88 million dollars, or the equivalent of whatever your currency is, what are the first three things you would do with it?



You have all summer to answer if you wish.

7 responses so far.



DB

Outlandish Overcoming 6/11/09

To imagine the unimaginable is the highest use of the imagination.

Cynthia Oziek
#########
Welcome to my lab.
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I went with some friends to see the Ringling Brothers circus at the very large Madison Square Garden in New York City. After watching the clowns, the jugglers, the contortionists, the lions, horses, dogs and elephants, the tight rope walkers and trapeze swingers, the last act was the most amazing.

They wheeled out a cannon at one end, a guy climbed into it and was shot out of it, flying across the entire place at about 50 miles an hour. He landed in a vertical net on the extreme other side, bounced out of it into a horizontal net, bounced a few more times, rolled over and swung down to take a bow, The crowd went wild.

Of course I had heard of the act known as "The Human Cannon Ball" but I had never seen it before. I was very impressed. I got to thinking how and why anyone would think of doing such a thing. Cannons have been around for a long time but only for battle reasons. Many things have been fired from cannons: lead balls, of course, fire balls, chains, nails. I even remember reading that some artillerymen shot a bag full of poisonous snakes over an enemy's wall. Nasty.

But to shoot a human being out of a cannon is an entirely different matter, it's unimaginable, especially if you want them to survive. Someone had to imagine it, Someone had to imagine the unimaginable.

Well, someone did and it was probably a Canadian named William Hunt. But ironically Mr. Hunt was not the one who first came out of the mouth of the cannon. The first human cannon shot heard round the world was in 1877 in England. And the first Human Cannon Ball was a 14 year old girl named Rossa Matilda Richter who flew through the air under the name of Zazel. Not only did she survive but P.T. Barnum took her on tour with his circus.

Okay, you've imagined the human cannon ball, now imagine a small wooden bottomed boat sailing alone across the ocean to settle a group of people in a continent none of them have ever been to. Imagine a device that can transport people without using a horse. Imagine a machine you can sit in and fly through the air. Imagine a ship that sails under water. Imagine a cannon so powerful it can shoot people to the moon. Imagine going to Mars.

If we can believe it, it's believable. If we can conceive of it, it's conceivable. And if we can imagine it, it's no longer unimaginable. It's doable.

DB Vagabond Journeys
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Tell someone you care about them and wish them well today.
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SPRING QUIZ

THIS IS NOT A CONTEST

What do you think was the most important event of 2008? and

What was the most significant event in your life last year?

You have the Spring to answer if you wish. 10 days left.

15 responses so far.

Leave answers on my email dbdacoba@aol.com or on my journal
http://vagabondjourneys.blogspot.com/. Thank you. DB

Obligatory Observation 4/19/09

The actor should be able to create the universe in the palm of his hand.

Lawrence Olivier
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A big greeting to you.
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After many years as a theatre actor, I finally got cast in my first film. Doing that job was a learning experience for me in a lot of ways.

Almost all film actors, even if they have spent their entire professional careers working in front of a camera, will tell you that they really enjoy working on the stage with a live audience, and some of them often take a big cut in salary to do it. From the 7th Century BCE until the 20th Century CE the stage is where actors worked. Film acting is an unusual and difficult process. The principles are the same but the circumstances are different. From the audience seats in a theatre you can see the entire playing area at once. If an actor needs to get your attention he can do that with a gesture or a movement. It's called "taking focus" (some nasty actors do it when they're not supposed to, that's called "stealing focus"). Since the director decides what is going to be shown on the screen, focus is not an issue to an actor in a film. There is a different kind of focus involved.

In my first film I had one scene. It was with the leading actor only and during it my character had to perform an intricate task sitting at a table.

The first lesson I learned was that while in theatre the playing area stays the same, in film it keeps changing. The "stage" can be as large as a desert or as small as the eye of a needle. In performing my table top task I was surrounded by equipment. The camera was focused on my fingers, the microphone was suspended in front of my face, there were hot, bright lights all around me. Neither my face, nor the rest of my body were involved in the scene, only my fingers. My stage was very small.

The other lesson I learned was that, while in theatre the actor has his body, his face and his own voice to communicate his intent, the reason he is doing something. In this case I had only my fingers to tell the story. Which meant that even though nothing else was involved, it was necessary for me to know, as my character the what and why of the scene. It was my fingers really doing the intricate task, not pretending to do it. And something more than simple task making was being communicated, if only in the subtlest, almost invisible, manner. As I have said before it's the thinking behind every action that gives it its life, on stage or off. Will, desire, objective, love are all in every detail the actor does on stage, but especially in a film where the action is so specific,

It is imagination that leads us to art and invention. It is possible through thought, imagination and careful attention to details to create the universe in the hand, on a table or anywhere it's needed.

DB Vagabond Journeys
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Put some spring in someone's life today.
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Happy birthday J.B. wherever you are.
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Ingenious Inquiries 12/19/08

Every great inspiration is but an experiment.

Charles Ives
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I once heard imagination described as taking something and putting something else with it that other people wouldn't think of putting there. Such as attaching a motor to a goat cart to make the wheels turn.

Who was it that first attached a piece of movable wood to the bottom of a ship so that it could be steered through the water without having to keep adjusting the sails?

Who was it that mounted a large balloon on the top of a small cabin and let it float through the air with a motor attached to propel it?

Who fastened his sock to a post to show where the wind was coming from and how hard it was blowing?

Who sewed his bag onto his trousers and thus invented the pocket?

Who stretched an animal hide across a large kettle to make a loud drum?

Who was the baker who started selling sliced bread? And, as a matter of fact, as someone recently asked, what was the greatest thing before sliced bread?

The list is endless. Put this thing with that thing and see what you come up with.


DB

(After Sunday the days will be getting longer, think of that.)