Imagination vs. Reality

Editor’s Note: Any opinions expressed in City Voice articles are the authors’ own and do not necessarily reflect those of the City Voice.

Imagination is one of the most subjective things to define. You can overly associate it with anything else if you try hard enough, so it’s important to draw the line between similarities and correlation. To try and find the boundaries of imagination, we must find the difference between art and imagination. One could say that imagination is the beginning of art, but then what separates it from ideas? The definition that speaks the most to me is as follows: imagination is the fictionalized world that you see in your head; without the knowledge of language, for example, this essay would just look like gibberish. That is why I am of the notion that imagination can’t manifest in the real world, as the real world has no knowledge of what anything means. But, people do know what words mean, and can use their imagination to interpret them. And utilizing interpretation is very important to many writers, among them being journalist and novelist. Gabriel García Márquez.

Márquez’s stories are very open-ended; we never know so many things and it asks us to use our imagination. In The Woman Who Came at 6 O’Clock, for example, we never find out what the queen’s job is. We can make a simple assumption but that, if anything, lacks imagination. She could be a hospitality worker or any other number of things. But that’s a problem — when people tell us what something means when in reality they are just using their imagination it limits what you could think. My imagination sees the two ends of any creative endeavor as something that looks like a bow tie pasta. There are any range of imagination at one end of a text then it gets compressed when it is written out, preformed, sculpted, or painted then it is on the person comprehending the object to use their imagination the other end of the bow tie with a wide range of possibilities but potential not what the author meant. This is appealing as it lets art be more accessible to all.

If we look at the same sculptor and I think that it represents how freedom needs to be freed to be able to take effect but you think that it means freedom is trapped right now but the artist thought it meant that capitalism is a trap. Too much of our current education system is focused on right or wrong and, in all fairness, with math there is a definitive right and wrong, but in English there can be a lack of an absolute right or wrong due to how one’s imagination can transform text into what it seems to be to the person. If someone mentally believes that mythology is so much more exciting than Shakespeare they will think that the required Mythology read is better than the required Shakespeare. But someone who hates mythology and loves Shakespeare will think the opposite; their juxtaposition doesn’t make either wrong.

Another problem with the notion that imagination can manifest into the real world is the idea that things have an intrinsic meaning to someone who exclusively speaks Chinese and doesn’t know English might scratch their head as it just looks like abstract lines to them. It has no meaning, just random black scribbles. English is also a very limited language. What if a color no one has ever comprehended before is discovered? How do you describe it? You can’t, because you can imagine the color, but it is above words. We can also see how Theory of Knowledge (TOK) and language are tied together, but only limit it; for example in George Orwell’s 1984 and the notion of doublespeak where factual knowledge is almost impossible to come by. Any government official can make random claims and as we see in the novel, people go back and change what they said so that they are always right. This sense of limited knowledge is present throughout the book we see the main protagonist clearly think one thing but he only manifests fake smiles to prevent himself from being taken. But through clever social signals, other people can get what he means, although they have to guess, forcing the messages to be up to their imagination.

One large debate, especially in the modern era, is if you can separate art from an artist. Tying into imagination, does an artist’s imagination change what others can imagine that the art is? You have to separate the art from the artist sometimes for the simple reason that you are not them. A well-known example of this is when the rightful backlash on JK Rowling appeared online; when kids who just want to read fantasy read them they don’t think that, for instance, “oh, the goblins mean this” because it is established in fantasy what they mean. Does it take away from the fact that they can be hurtful? No, but generally people, especially kids, are naturally meaning to do good so they don’t realize what things can mean. But this also goes hand in hand with why the artist’s imagination doesn’t change what the art is. Just because John Green imagines Mario Kart as this memory with his friends, others may just imagine it as an okay time with better games out there.

Another main reason why imagination can’t manifest in the real world is because manifesting has taken a new meaning online. When somebody says manifesting nowadays, it means that they want something to come true and happen in the real world. This leads people down a mental path where it can be taken as the question is how can imagination become real which it cannot. Imagination is such a fickle thing because we as humans can’t imagine the same thing. It is almost impossible because we are all so different in our heads; one person’s vision of the color blue could be someone else’s green, as people just naturally favor the “norm.” Who is to say that color blind people are actually color blind? There is definitely a case to be made that we as a species are color blind in comparison to things like mantis shrimp.

This is why authors and audience can never truly be on same page. People can create whole worlds in their heads and then write out every painstaking detail and yet a reader can have a whole different world in their heads or none at all. There are people who hear an internal monologue in their head and other who have absolute silence. Some people could imagine these characters with an inner dialogue, giving them more reason for their actions. But all of this also applies to the other way people are very fragile. We all love to win but not everyone can be a winner. So depending on what the interpreter is feeling that day it can change the message of something a lot. When listening to John Green’s story off of The Anthropocene Reviewed about googling strangers I felt such a connection not just because he is an excellent storyteller but because of my emotions. The story felt like it had a much more somber and existential tone to it, making the story feel more alive and present.

This flexibility can be a problem in teaching. In a normally structured class there are clear goals and objectives, but when teachers are vague this can lead to people disliking the class because they like the structure that schools offer. If an assignment like an essay is left without a terrible amount of objective, “In a way, this is a research essay…In a way, this is a personal essay…In a way, this is an argumentative essay…” without clearly defined points, it can definitely leave some people confused. While you can ask questions and it is elaborated on further in class it still doesn’t provide the structure people are looking for. This kind of teaching style is necessary for kids to learn how real jobs work, yes, but jobs are specialized with people working and having lots of unique knowledge on how to do it. Not everyone has the knowledge about how imagination manifests into the real world so people might take the route of a completely different topic almost trying to disprove the guiding question wrong. And while most of the response will probably be following the topic at hand some people will use their imagination and take what the instructions asked literally.

Imagination doesn’t want to be defined because of the fact that people are so different from one another and how TOK is integrated into imagination but still can’t manifest into the real world. Instruction is also key in order to let imagination free. It feels almost natural for imagination to stem from constriction but when given the opportunity it tends to stay safe. Imagination isn’t just notable to manifest into the real world imagination can be limited by the real world so it can only pass through mediums.

SAM CORRADO

Senior Editor — Social Media Manager at The City Voice

Hello, my name is Sam Corrado. I am a science and opinion writer for the City Voice. I run our social media and contribute ideas for others. Some of my interests include electronics and science. I am planning to go to college for chemistry and enjoy baking in my spare time.