January 30th, 2003


Dear Sir or Madam,


It is one of those strange realities that our imaginations often exceed the laws and limitations of real time and space. To dream an impossible dream is certainly within the realm of possibility.


This is more than just clever rhetoric and you can easily see that for yourselves by recalling your favourite impossible dream. I don't just mean your unrealistic hopes for a secure and happy life in a peaceful and properly rewarding world. I mean your really impossible dreams;
like those that deny the laws of physics.


Consider a few notions that challenge the imagination, such as the time honoured question of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. In our fertile human minds we can 'conceptualise' and even 'visualise' the most impossible schemes even though we know they are physically impossible.


Take animated cartoons for example. We see anvils and bank vaults fall
from the skies and crush cartoon characters. We laugh and watch as the accordion shaped victim waddles away. We have seen the impossible. Someone imagined it and drew it and we 'saw' it. Complete with a 'squeeze-box' soundtrack.


So it is not only possible to dream of the impossible, it is also possible to demonstrate and communicate impossible ideas. Once 'thought', these impossibilities can be illustrated, recreated or represented by comic-book and computer artists and by film-makers using
spatial distortion and other techniques.


When you consider the thousands of 'imaginative' ideas put forward in the past couple of centuries - submarines, anti-biotics, flight, wireless communications, atomic power, teleportation, etc - and then begin to count the numbers of these impossibilities we have actually achieved, or continue to aspire to, you might begin to worry (as I do) that we perhaps live too much in our impossible dreams. You will at
least agree that we would all be very unhappy if we had to stop living our dream.


Much has been said about the negative influence of comics, films, TV and video games and I am not here to remind you of that. I will leave it to others to claim that any specific act of 'real' violence might have been inspired by any specific 'imaginary' situation. I would however ask you to consider that violence is not the only thing that, given a little light, has a way of creating itself from the fertile soils of our imaginations.


It is equally possible that 'peace' and 'love' can jump from a screen full of Care Bears and into your heart. It is just as likely that innocence and glee can be injected into a living human mind from a Teletubby. A flexible Jerry Lewis hath begot a rubber-faced Jim Carey so why should we not expect the Star Trek Utopia to shortly become our standard of living. If, as it seems, all our dreams are coming true, we should try to dream better dreams.


I am old enough to have seen many sports and dance scenes created by special effects in old films which have since been realised by keen and eager athletes who never suspected they were trying to imitate a physically impossible stunt. Guitar players and other musicians will
testify to stories of young players who managed to recreate and play 'licks' that were originally only possible by over-dubbing.


My point being that in creating the appearance of possibility we also create the potential for the possibility of the most impossible dreams.





Hoping you will give some consideration to these thoughts,

I remain asleep in front of the television set hoping for,

peace,
~jwf~

To Whom It May

Concern
Archive

~jwf~

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