What? Who?

Very simply, this blog is a place where I can put some thoughts on page about writing, fantasy, imagination, and other assorted sundries. I have been working on a novel that is part of a larger cycle for years, decades really; a Primary Vision came together and Serious Work begun about three and a half years ago, although has been erratic since.

I am also interested in role-playing games (RPGs), although have not played in five or six years. I think that tabletop RPGs (e.g. Dungeons & Dragons) are a dying breed of hobby–something more than “just” a hobby in that they exercise imagination, or at least, in Coleridgean terms, fancy–with the potential of glimpses of Secondary Imagination, both in the act of “campaign world” creation and the telling of Story.

From Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria:

The IMAGINATION then, I consider either as primary, or secondary. The primary IMAGINATION I hold to be the living Power and prime Agent of all human Perception, and as a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I AM. The secondary Imagination I consider as an echo of the former, co-existing with the conscious will, yet still as identical with the primary in the kind of its agency, and differing only in degree, and in the mode of operation. It dissolves, diffuses, dissipates, in order to recreate; or where this process is rendered impossible, yet still at all events it struggles to idealise and unify. It is essentially vital, even as all objects (as objects) are essentially fixed and dead.

FANCY, on the contrary, has no other counters to play with, but fixities and definites. The Fancy is indeed no other than a mode of Memory emancipated from the order of time and space; while it is blended with, and modified by that empirical phenomenon of the will, which we express by the word CHOICE. But equally with the ordinary memory the Fancy must receive all its materials ready made from the law of association.

The Imagination–both primary and secondary–is in danger of withering away through lack of use. If you compare, say, table-top RPGs and computer games, the former exercises imagination, or at least starts from fancy and (potentially) alchemically transmutes static images into living imaginations (what I am calling Imaginal Alchemy). Video games, on the other hand, start with static forms and further re-ify them, so that the imagination concretizes and dies. Given that imagination is the source of human innovation and mental vitality, this is a travesty to say the least.

So, as a writer–and soon-to-be Waldorf school teacher–I seek to re-vivify the imagination, both in myself and in others, as the human expression of freedom and creativity. Of course the raison d’etre of this blog is a bit more humble.