Imagination

Another saturday night, and Close Encounters of the third kind was on television.
I dimmed the lights in the room, and sat down to watch this beautiful movie. I like science fiction. It kind of opens your mind. It dares you to dream of the "impossible". The makers of this movie relied on their imagination to come up with that unforgetable tune with which they communicate with the other lifeforms. They communicate through different tones. Luckily they didn`t speak english like the lifeforms I saw in the original series of Star Trek. I`m rediscovering those as one of the best series ever made for television.

Yesterday there was an episode where Kirk (I envy William Shatner, he kisses a new enchanting girl every episode), McCoy and Spock got kidnapped by some species. In the dark room they find a girl lying on some kind of sofa, and they assume that she has also been kidnapped. Then Kirk becomes the first subject to be "tested" by the aliens. The interogate him and hurt him incredibly with some kind of device. The aliens admire Kirks strength and give him compliments. They however do not answer the question why they are doing this. He gets dumped back, heavily injured, in the black room where his shipmates are and where the girl is.

Suddenly, the girl moves to Kirk, and with some kind of power removes his wounds. In this process she transfers them to her body, where they finally heal. She however feels the pain that he was feeling (perfect opportunity for overacting, and so it is done ;)). The aliens come in the room and announce that they need another subject, who will be subjected to even harsher threatment. McCoy uses his medical equipment to put Kirk and Spock to sleep, and thus sacrifices himself for his shipmates. The girl (who by the way does not have any vocal-chords) looks at all this with amazement.

McCoy is being tortured, close to death. Somehow Kirk and Spock manage to enter the torturing room, together with the girl, who they are trying to save. They see McCoy, and want to help him, but the aliens won`t allow it. They are testing the girl. They are testing her species. They want to see if her species is already so developed that they are willing to sacrifice their lifes for somebody they care about or love. Why do they want to do this? Their solar-system is on the verge of collapse, and they can only afford to transfer one species from their solar-system to a save distance. It was all a test. However, in testing the girl for "Empathy" the aliens lose their own sence of "Empathy". Something that Kirk makes them realise with the usual speech.

So those aliens where not simply evil. They just used the humans as test material. Maybe it was a bit un-ethical, but hey, they took a random sample and accidently Kirk and his friends passed by. There goal was actually relatively good. To test ot to learn another species to care for others of her own (and in this case) other kind. I like it when t.v. makes you think.

Back to Imagination.
I don`t like labels. Labels are created to organise things in your mind, but sadly, labels are also often associated with a lot of preconceptions. As in that famous "good" versus "evil". My opinion: What is good or evil lies in the eyes of the beholder. Labels cause your mind to be closed about something. It might be an easy solution to organise data in your head, or to remember things, but it definitely isn`t always right. Just look at the music industry. There is no other place where there are so many labels. You`ve got Indie, Pop, Rock, Hardrock, Metal, Gothic, Deathmetal, Country, Alt Country, Alternative, Disco, Trance, Dance, Alt Rock, Britpop..etcetc. The sad thing is that some artists are labeled in a certain genre and thus are expected to create that certain kind of music. If they don`t, they are getting a considerable harder time with their fans and with their record-company. Look at Bob Dylan when he started playing electric guitar, look at U2 and their Discotheque. Finally these artists use their imagination to start something new, to radically change something, but part of the audience had different expectations. U2 now returned to getting old on the same sound they invented almost 25 years ago. Dylan didn`t give a sh*t and pushed through. Luckily.

Maybe I just don`t like preconceptions. Maybe I don`t like closed minds.
But do I have an open mind?
The only thing I know is that I like to use my imagination.

They are out there. Somewhere.
She is out there. Somewhere.
You might call me mad (another label).
But without the imagination of others I could not have posted this blog.