The Sophisticated Collage

As a forum for various components which create emotional shadows—suppressed feeling & unresolved aspects we have either rejected or disowned—imagination might be a source of illumination in any quest to better understand the artist's personal identity. Each of us strives to determine singular purpose from the world around yet there are so many disparaging aspects to factor. Oftentimes, in efforts to balance the pain of living, we chose as focus events & experiences described as ego-enhancing.

Recorded impressions are so often reviewed to amplify a sense of self-esteem; memory is utilized as morale booster. Yet in the expanse of imagination, there is opportunity to synthesize darker & lighter aspects of what we contain. In the safety of the theoretical, that which is feared can be given opportunity for exploration & this increase in familiarity may begin to break down what terrifies—it is reflection in the quest for de-sensitization.

By trying to focus only on the things we deem “positive” & ignoring or repressing the rest, we are simply perpetrating the polarization of light & dark forces.
                            ~ Shakti Gawain

In order to open wide the curtains which reveal subjective screens of specific imagination, it is necessary to pass beyond notional concepts of what we typically perceive as good & evil. If we are in the midst of creating a story where a character operates beyond subjective moral perimeters, in fairness to the purity of the narrative, we cannot stop writing simply because we are different.

Is there some vital measure which can be taken to contain our own impulses when engaged in the act of creating? Can we suspend personal ethics & allow our characters the range of options they would be afforded based on the sum of distinct personality traits? The answers to these questions I would respond a hesitant “yes .” Works of fiction are, by design, imagined events which might easily find the writer in a position to suffer consequence if they were based on actual experience.

Still.

The issue sustains, for how can writers be certain we are not simply acting upon some latent permutation of our own darkness? Given an opportunity, would we chose to behave as we make characters do? Is there some transference in allowing fiction the license to behave badly?


{Artwork by Lance Letscher}