Children of an Idle Brain

Posted on | July 15, 2009 | No Comments

I talk of dreams,
Which are the children of an idle brain,
Begot of nothing but vain fantasy,
Which is as thin of substance as the air
And more inconstant than the wind…

(Shakespeare, Romeo & Juliet, Act I, scene iv)

Last night, for a brief moment in time, I thought Harry Potter was real.

The new movie comes out today and, in preparation for my trip to see it with friends on Friday night, I’ve been re-reading the book. I guess I fell asleep on the couch for a bit, because I started to have this incredible dream where Harry Potter (not the actor, but the character) started talking to me, telling me all about his life.

When I jolted awake, it took me a minute to realize that Harry was not in my living room. And honestly? I was a little disappointed about coming back to reality.

Ever since I was a child, I’ve always found it extremely easy to lose myself in a book, a movie or even in my own imagination. I rarely needed actual toys to play with – they were just props. The story was in my head, playing out as if it were really happening right in front of me. Even now, I can still imagine things so clearly that it’s sometimes surprising to realize they’re not real.

These fictional worlds, whether of my own making or someone else’s, are filled with people who didn’t exist, but who are so real to me sometimes that they might as well exist. I can easily picture having a conversation with Harry, Gandalf or Lizzie Bennett, talking to them as if they were sitting right next to me, flesh and bone.

I’m not crazy (I think). I know it’s just fiction. And I’m pretty sure I wasn’t hallucinating and talking to someone who wasn’t there. But sometimes it’s just so real.

I used to think I had a problem with reality or that I had an unusually overactive imagination. But mostly I think it’s just an escape – to, as Billy Joel so aptly put it, “forget about life for awhile.”

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