Creating Dreams

Two TV programmes to catch my eye lately were both on Channel 5 and are a complete juxtaposition of subject matter. ‘World’s Busiest’ immersed the viewer in the frantic energy of the Venetian Palazzo Hotel in Las Vegas, which claims to be the world’s busiest hotel, catering for 7,000 guests at one time and bringing in 50,000 visitors every day. The programme also took us to the world’s busiest station, Shinjuku Station, in Tokyo, where every day 3 million travellers traverse its platforms.

In contrast to this Ben Fogle introduced us to people who have chosen to leave the ‘rat race’ and establish ‘New Lives in the Wild’. We met people such as Ian Usher, who sold his ‘life’ on Ebay and bought a tiny island in the Panama Canal and Steve Lall, an ex-fighter pilot, who turned his back on high society to set up home in a shack in the footfalls of the Himalayas.

It is as I was watching these two programmes that i found myself asking, in this day and age, what is the norm? Who out of these two sets of people has the right idea? As a species are the answers to be found in advancement or retreat?

There is a fact that my mind clung to when watching the Shinjuku Station programme and that is that Tokyo, with a population of 36 million people, has one of the highest suicide rates in the developed world. 30,000 people kill themselves every year. The programme also made me think about the regime in North Korea, or what we have been permitted to see of it, and then I thought about Art. Where does Art fit in these cultures? Are there any Artists? For Art is about expression and the freedom of expression, and yet in a society driven by consumerism and bureaucracy all forms of expression seem to have been stamped out or erased. Is that why the suicide rate is significantly high? If you restrict expression and identity, do you restrict life?

I take it for granted that I live in a society where I can freely paint and express my identity and my creativity, and yet this programme highlighted to me that I have made the choice to dedicate my life to just that, just as the individuals in ‘Lives in the Wild’ have chosen their lifestyle of no electricity and washing in swamps, for example. And yet there are still people in societies who have no choice. Everything is governed for them.

I wander how I would feel in that kind of society? Dead is the answer. Creativity runs so freely through my veins, that if you suppressed it or blocked it, my heart would stop pumping. In the same way, if you told me I could never go outside and ‘experience’ nature, my lungs would collapse. I would suffocate within the confines of bricks and concrete. It is in nature that my thirst is quenched and my appetite sated. My favourite author, Emily Brontë and I share the same spirit. Charlotte writes, “My sister Emily loved the moors. Flowers brighter than the rose bloomed in the blackest of the heath for her; out of a sullen hollow in a livid hillside her mind could make an Eden. She found in the bleak solitude many and dear delights; and not the least and best-loved was – liberty.”

 

BUT and that is huge BUT, that is me, and Emily Brontë it seems, and it turns out that I am an introvert. Any psychology test will tell you that. It is in the quietness and in the spaces between the busyness where my art is found. Yet there are people who would and probably do shrivel in nature and thrive and come alive in the company of others. They are the ones who form the cities and create the buzz.

Through all of this the word ‘choice’ becomes paramount. I have CHOSEN to leave the busyness of the South Coast of England and to leave my corporate career. And Ben Fogle introduced us to even more extreme decision makers. And yet how many people in places like Tokyo and North Korea would love to make that decision, but can’t. What happens then?

Whilst writing this blog, I had a dream. In it I was attached to a Big Brother type machine. Probes were attached to my head and were literally draining my dreams. And then I knew, or perhaps hoped, that is the one thing that these societies cannot do, although they may try. And that is to steal dreams. As long as there is a dream, there is life.

So there is no clear answer or solution. As with yin and yang, there is a space and, in fact, a necessity for both extreme ways of living. We, as a species, need the ones who push for advancement, but we need the ones who search for retreat. It is up to us, the ones who have a choice, to choose what is best for us.