Scrapbook Notebook Series Scrapbook #2 | Page 20

Only now do I appreciate how these stories speak to a very old, very
human inheritance common to us all. The bridge between us and the
ancient Greek myths, the Indian myths, the Celtic legends, the Caves
of Lascaux, the Pyramids of Egypt, Stephenson’s Rocket, the Cistine
Chapel, the Clifton Suspension bridge, the theory of relativity, or the
most delicate origami swan, is imagination.
In the world that my text books tried to reduce and label, were the fruits
of our prehistoric propensity to dream and imagine. I was a stooped
figure with a bunch of heavy iron keys in my hand, trying to find the
one that would fit the lock in my head. The ones labelled ‘algebra’ and
‘commercial studies’ were never going to do that.

The Mighty Thor artwork by John Buscema. Copyright © 1974 Marvel Comics Group

The key that I eventually found, unlikely as it may sound, was American
comics. The work of Jack Kirby and John Buscema, Neal Adams and the
great British artist Barry Smith, unlocked worlds of imagination for me.
The stories free-wheeled through an infinity of space, time and other
dimensions. I made a connection and linked two things together which
have persisted and sustained me in every way possible. Story art and
print. The smell of it, the weight of the pages, even the sound they make
when turning them, it was all a sheer delight!
The desire to spend my life in my imagination and to express it in
pictures and words has remained intact. Like the big-bang, the impetus
of those times continues to propel me forward, expanding and taking
in new horizons as it goes. I believe that through imagination we are
born again into a new world, or can partake of the everyday world
with new eyes (realising first that there is nothing everyday about it).
Imagination is an intensely human and primal quality that naturally
craves constant re-invention in a state of ceaseless renewal. Apart from
the entertainment and discoveries that flow from it, without imagination
we cannot fully engage, empathise or comfort.
Whether we feel we have imagination or not, every day of our lives is
touched by it in some form or other. Everything we use, from the bed
we wake up in, to the transport that takes us home again, and each key
I’ve used to type this, before it was concretised in the world existed as
a pulse, an electrical signal, a doodle or a dream; one of the countless
ethereal objects of the imagination.
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