Angels in America - on the limitations of the imagination

[Great Tower]

I unexpectedly came across this movie - and remembering how much I missed it - just wanted to share a piece of dialog inside a mutual hallucination. Somehow these thoughts about hallucinations reminds me of my daydreaming. What do you make of it?

 

- There must be a mistake here, I don't recognise you. Are you some sort of... imaginary friend?

- Noooo, aren't you too old to have imaginary friends?

- I have emotional problems and I took too many pills. Why are you wearing make-up?

.......

- I don't understand this, if I didn't ever see you before, and I don't think I did, then I don't think you should be here, in this hallucination because... In my experience the mind, which is where hallucinations come from, shouldn't be able to make up anything that wasn't there to start with, it didn't enter it from experience, from the real world, imagination can't create anything new, can it? It only recycles bits and pieces from the world and reassembles them into visions. Am I making sense right now?

- Given the circumstances, yes

- So when we think we've escaped the unbearable ordinaryness and well, untruthfulness of our lives, it's really only the same old ordinaryness and falseness rearranged into the appearance of novelty and truth. Nothing unknown is knowable. Don't you think it's depressing?

- The limitations of the imagination? 

- Yes

- It's something you learn after your second themeparty, it's all been done before.

- The world. Finite. Terribly, terribly... Well this is the most depressing hallucination I ever had.

- Geez, I did try to be amusing....

 

Sweet dreams :)

 

 

 

[The Phantom]

That is pretty intense dialog. I think it can be true and false at the same time. The mind does recycle feelings and emotions. I've had a counselor tell me that because of some of my passed trauma's, my brain recycles words and feelings that people have hurt me with. "You're fat!" You're stupid!" "No one loves you!". In ways I think that's how some of our daydreams play out I guess. Those hurtful messages get rearranged into comforting illusions in our minds. We create a story where we are the opposite of those negative feelings. But I also believe our minds can make something out of nothing. It's a miraculous gift we've been given. Look at some of the great literary works where authors have created completely different worlds. I also believe that inspiration plays a drastic role in the creation of images and stories.