Since I've got a little time this afternoon I thought I'd reply to some of your individual comments.
It's much, much stranger and more metaphysical than I remembered it being.
I'm looking forwards to that then Cat.
You know after you mentioned that I had a memory from long, long ago. My buddies and I who used to play D&D together would often congregate in one basement or another after the game, each get in a recliner or chair, turn the lights out except for a blacklight or lava lamp (you younger people might not have ever used one), sit in the dark, shut our eyes and listen to the Fourth Tower of Inverness or one of the other Jack Flanders radio plays.
After it was over we'd all turn the lights on again and more often than not somebody would go, "Wow." It was kinda like a narcotics-free drug trip of the mind. (We'd sometimes do that with a new Pink Floyd album too.) Later on I got hold of some of my dad's old radio play broadcasts and would listen to them in my room in the dark too. Green Hornet, horror and detective theatres etc. I got really pretty good at using my imagination to create bizarre mental images that way (through use of music, radio, mediation, and different combination methods) because I was also trained in Raja Yoga.
I hadn't thought about that kinda thing in decades really, but it sure brought back some memories. And man my imagination sure could wander back then. And it was a lot more powerful too. Maybe that was just because I was younger and more naturally willing to be amazed, or maybe it was simply because I was just doing the kinds of things that kept my imagination humming and buzzing. So I'm trying to "get back to where I once belonged," and see if it will work the way it used to. Or hopefully, now that I've seen a lot more and experienced a lot more in life, maybe it will work even better than before.
Things like that also used to deeply effect the games we played. We used to try to outdo each other in our, I don't want to say weirdness, but in our imaginings. Stuff like Flanders and other sources like that would leak into our games.
What I've found is that it all starts with the GM being really aware and excited about the world or adventure they've created. In this case I mean a palpable excitement to his presentation of the world and everything about it.
I completely agree with your point about excitement and enthusiasm Steve. Enthusiasm is central I think not only to triggering the imagination but also to sustaining it and improving it. Enthusiasm has an interesting etymology. It is taken from en (inside, within) and thusia (theos, god or God). So the word literally means "to be possessed" (by God). It is one of my favorite Greek terms, indeed it is one of my favorite words. I don't think you can get very far at anything in this world without being really enthused about it. Enthusiasm sustains effort and it sustains imagination and innovation.
Many years ago, I attended a lecture on the early colonization efforts of the Americas, with specific emphasis on Meso- and South America.
Lectures, if they are given by somebody who is really good at what they do and/or happens to be enthusiastic about their subject matter, are also highly stimulating to my imagination. When I can't attend a lecture, and I'm down to about maybe one a month due to my work schedule and other obligations, then I try to listen to at least part of one good lecture a week. That's kinda easy when my kids are being homeschooled, I can just sit in on their lectures. We live in really amazing times, because I can listen to lectures on CD from great professors and business men and military leaders and so forth from all over the world on CD or tape. But I also miss the old days when I could just knock off of whatever I was doing and go sit in on a university or lab lecture. Other things I miss about live lectures are the use of maps, graphic material, demonstrations, experiments, etc. And question and answer follow-ons.
As far as I go I really enjoy lectures on forensic techniques, criminalistics and criminology, art, science, technology, invention, history, military matters, and religion. I've posted some of the lectures I get to attend here.
Dante's Ninth. I need to put up a new one though.
Secondly, I think it is important to not get too hung up on techniques. Certainly, there is a craft to writing, a skill-set; the better honed the craft, the more capable it is of "carrying" the content that it seeks to convey. But imagination is not content, and what I hear you saying that you are looking for is the spark that ignites the imaginative fire to create its own living, changing content--not forcefeed content into someone else. This is why there is such a difference between, say, television and books. Books inspire, they cajole, the (usually gently) feed the imagination; television straps it down, forcefeeds and overstuffs it.
I agree with a lot of that Merc. I also used to think of TV as not every good for the imagination, but I think that is slowly changing nowadays for the better. I generally though tend to think of most TV as passive, and things like radio, stories, books, etc. as, what's the word I'm looking for, stimulative. In a gentle way as you say, that is it expresses content but it does not rigidly define it. It rather tends to "inspire" it as you have said.
I guess, now that you have made me think of it, I am looking for techniques that trigger and inspire but do not define or exclude the imagination. By define I mean set boundaries on and thereby artificially limit. I guess what I am saying is that I am looking more for "compass techniques" rather than ruler techniques. I'm not looking to measure or set the limits of, but for methods and techniques that will "set one off in the right direction" and keep them moving in the right direction without telling the imagination "if you go any farther then you drop off the face of the world." I hope that makes sense. To me discussing stuff like this can sometimes be like discussing spiritual or religious or metaphysical matters, the vocabulary is either not very well developed in English or sometimes the words themselves can be what limits the meaning of what you are trying to express. I hope you kinda see my point.
Perhaps the most important aspect of this is the ability to be able to enter into that imaginative space yourself, to live within it, inspire (trigger) it within yourself. Whatever you write should inspire you, should make you feel tingling and give you that sense of awwwwwe...you mean the darkness between the stars is endless?!
But techniques do matter to some degree and we can more easily talk about them. For that a couple things come to mind, first and perhaps foremost: less is more. When you are describing something, what words you use are more important than how many; in fact, more often than not the more words you use the more your "information packet" is obscured. Michael Moorcock is a great example of a sparser style that is strong in triggering (at least his early work was); Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea also comes to mind, as does Patricia McKillip's Riddlemaster series.
But the reader needs something to chew on, so you don't want to be too spartan. It is like the principle of building a camp fire: too much wood and it is smothered, too little and it dies out. The right amount...well, it differs for the individual reader, and I would suspect that today's reader requires more than thirty, even twenty years ago.
I also agree with this. An imagination space within a person is extremely important because imagination impressions from without, well, in that situation you cannot control the contents, but when you have an internal imagination source then you can manipulate your imagination in any way you personally choose. Years ago after reading the Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci I built a Memory Palace in my own mind. Much later I decided to expand upon that and used Constantinople as the model for building a memory city. Then I changed that around to include objects and architecture form cities from all over the world and eventually put in mental laboratories (such as Archimedes had in the Method), libraries, theatres, hospitals, churches, temples, arenas, museums, stadiums, parks, wilderness areas, etc. Then I became so busy involved in things in the world that for years I really haven't worked on my city, expanded it, or visited it very often, except to store things in my memory or for inventing or visualizing stuff, that kind of thing. I'm going back to it more and more often lately though, and maybe that is one of the things that triggered this thread. Anyway, I completely agree, an internal space is very, very useful for the mind, soul, and imagination in a person.
And I've often wondered if things like playing D&D didn't serve as an early sort of stimulus or training for developing things like my City of the Mind . If learning how to create dungeons, then adventures, then whole milieus and eventually worlds didn't allow me to develop techniques, however unconscious at the time, for later experimenting with and developing "spaces, structures, landscapes, and architectures" within my own mind. I don't think it is too silly to say that D&D gave me early practice regarding such things.
Another thing: Read what triggers your imagination. It is obvious but is worth saying. Read it and study it. If you are persistent enough, type a couple pages up, then try to simulate the style of that author. But I think the important thing is to be inspired, to enter that realm, whether through reading or writing (preferably both).
You know it's funny you should say that because when I was young I used to take lines or sections from Shakespeare, Keats, Virgil, Coleridge, anyone I thought was a great poet and tried rewriting those sections so as to "improve them." To see if I could make them better. Sometimes I'd try translating these sections into other languages. This assisted me greatly with becoming a far better poet and I think was one of the best writing techniques I ever developed.
Why it didn't occur to me to do the same with prose in the same way I don't know. But you gave me an idea. I'm gonna take out some of the best sections of some of the most imaginative prose I can find and then seek to rewrite it in an even better way if I can. It'll be good practice and good training.
And they said that video would kill the radio star.
Ain't it the truth?
The art of radio drama is making a comeback with podcasts. Some podiobooks have been made into some terrific radio dramas. One of my favorites is Billibub Baddings and the Case of the Singing Sword. Full-on cast and everything, with the talent of the lovely Leann Mabry. Mwrowr.
I also highly recommend J.C. Hutchins' 7th Son, and Tracy Hickman's The Immortals.
I'm gonna look into those DH. Interesting thing about the podcasts, because then you can turn a play into an individualized experience. That gives me some ideas.
it is amazing what you can do with a degree in Medieval History...
Ain't that the truth too. Though my first one was Religion and Philosophy. Yeah, I know, no jokes please....
And as for Jack Flanders ... I was always a little more fond of Ruby the Galactic Gumshoe, but with ZBS, it's all good.
I'm looking forward to hearing the voice of the Madonna Vampira again.
Well folks, the wife just came back home, so that's all of the responses I can make so far.
Thanks for the ideas and comments so far.
They've been interesting and useful.
