Imagination is often the ‘inner eye’ sliding aside ‘a nylon curtain’ and perceiving all that is to see there. Although, in the image, the notion of ‘nylon’ suggests something extremely light and flimsy, writers and composers down the ages have testified as to its weightiness, sometimes even equating its quality not to ‘nylon’ but to ‘steel’.
Of course, it will not be likened to ‘iron’ because the respected Winston Churchill made that phrase (the iron curtain) his own, although historical fact has it that the term was bandied around before he actually used it in a speech in Fulton, Missouri.
No, it might be more sensible to call it the velvet curtain because, on certain days, it’s really heavy to shift aside and revel in the landscapes of the mind. So it is fair to say that when one is asked to ‘imagine’ something, one starts looking inward, tugging at the curtain ... or, rather trying to find the curtain first to give it a tug.
A short discussion on this subject with a few friends reveals that this might not actually be the case; that, when ordered to imagine a scene or scenario, we actually begin by looking outward ... out, that is. Outside the window, for instance. Which, apparently, is the first ‘go to’ place.
As my friends point out, hundreds of popular songs have been composed with the lyric writer’s eyes trained on the world outside. And what those ‘trained’ eyes have seen has made its way into usually the leading lyrics of the song. The electronica/synth-pop/new wave/post-punk band New Order in its song Slow Jam has as its leading lyric, ‘As I look at the morning sky’. Overall, the song appears to be one of contentment, with the writer happy with the way things are (‘I don’t want the world to change/I like the way it is’), but before he arrives at this internal conclusion, he actually begins by looking at the world ‘outside’.
My mate reckons that this is common — not the song; not by a long shot — but the way we arrive at an internal conclusion. “We first look out,” he says, “then we internalise.”
My mate Barney, who hates being left out of a conversation, or going away from a ‘somewhat intellectual’ discussion without contributing his two-cents worth, drew our attention to another popular song of the late 1970s by Creedence Clearwater Revival, ‘Looking Out My Back Door’. But he’s quite right. It’s about a just-returned-home man sitting on his porch and letting his imagination ‘set in’.
What is interesting is what people tend to see when they do look out the window, or the porch or anywhere outside. Some see the sky, the sun and feel the wind; and a variety of adjectives and metaphors employed to bring the reader as close to the viewed image, which is what all good writing is about.
The sun has been equally described as a lemon, as a fireball. But in the case of the CCR song, John Fogerty who wrote it, looks into the distance but sees nothing of nature that he might in reality have been gazing upon. Instead, he imagines a host of items that, one could say, are actual products of his mind, that even as he’s sat there he’s managed to pull aside his velvet curtain and visualise ‘tambourines and elephants’ playing in a band’ and a ‘giant doing cartwheels’ and a ‘statue wearing high heels’.
It’s hard to conclude what this song is about exactly, but it does testify to the power of the imagination. One of my mates said that when imagination starts from the outside and continues to stay out, the exercise makes for ‘brighter, illuminated prose’. When it begins from the outside and ventures inward, it can often have ‘darker undertones’. I guess that’s not a fixed formula but it’s something worth passing on to budding writers (who’ve managed to stay with this column to the end.)
Kevin Martin is a journalist based in Sydney, Australia.
