Final Thoughts

The Ultimate Gift

True art turns those who experience it into artists themselves, for true art solicits participation.

Let's say we're watching a film. Alison enters the apartment she shares with Chloe. Chloe has bought some white orchids and is trying to find the right place to put them.

Alison knows that Chloe had had a date with Zak, a new guy, earlier that day.

 Alison: How'd it go with Zak? Chloe puts the orchids on an end table,  satisfied. She turns to Alison. Chloe (smiles): I usually go for yellow orchids, but I thought, "Hey, why not live  dangerously?" 

There's a huge gap here that you have to fill in. You see that Chloe's in a good mood so good that she's smiling, she bought flowers, and she even overrode her habitual pattern as to what color orchids to buy.

Therefore, in your mind, you fill in that the date must have gone very well.

You create the missing portions. Thus, when reading the dialogue, you co-create the story. You've been made into an artist yourself.

Or you're playing a console or PC game. You're exploring a destroyed castle. You hear a roar in the other room, and you had earlier been warned that monsters were on the prowl. In your mind, you fill in that there's a monster in the other room, and perhaps you even vaguely picture it. So it's you, not the game, who creates the monster at that second. You give it life. You have been made into an artist.

Let's take that game out of the console and insert another a science fiction example.

You've just gone to Venus the real Venus, teeming with a thriving civilization. They've projected the image of a deserted planet for thousands of years in order to fool Earth, as self-protection. They do this because they were invaded by Earth in Earth's first epoch, 75,000 years ago. In self-defense, they destroyed Earth's warrior culture then and erased that culture's remnants from our planet. All knowledge of that first epoch have been erased.

Here, on Venus, you find that each of the four directions have a history, and are labeled male or female. North is for warriors and is male. West is for dreamers and is female. South is for sorcerers and is male. East is for freedom bringers and is female.

Each day belongs to one of the four directions, and the days (and the directions they're associated with) rotate in sequence. Depending on which one of the four types of days it is, your weapons behave completely differently. So do your perceptions. The nature of events even change.

For instance, on East (freedom bringer) days, colors are brighter. On North (warrior) days, danger comes. On South (sorcerer) days, you can teleport yourself over miles of land.

Perhaps, as you continue on in the game, you'll learn more. But let's stop right here. I talked of an earlier Earth epoch, when warriors of Earth invaded the civilization on Venus….

There's a huge gap here that you'll start to fill in. What was that earlier culture on Earth like? What was its relationship to and history with Venus? As you begin to imagine and dream up these new elements, you bring them to life. You co-create them.

And how about the idea that the different directions on Venus have different histories and different qualities, and that they affect many aspects of this world, depending on which of the four types of days it is? In your mind, you'll assemble all these elements together in a way that starts to make sense. In short, although there are plenty of gaps, you'll fill them in. You create this world just as much as the game designer or writer. You give this world life.

When you see one of the Lord of the Rings films and find yourself caught up in the story, you're granting those characters life. When you play Vice City and find yourself laughing as your helicopter swoops in on an enemy, you're granting the game life. When you look at a Van Gogh painting and feel moved, that's because you're granting the painting life.

Earlier I said that an artist grants life. But real art solicits co-creation from the viewer or participant. Actually, there is no such thing as a "viewer," for anyone who fills in a painting, or movie characters, or a science fiction world with life is a co-creator and thus a participant. In games, participation is extreme because so much co-creation is elicited.

This book is simply about ways of making that co-creation more emotionally rich and dimensional.

There are those who would like to see a nation full of passive spectators, easily manipulated so they will swallow any news or policy they're force-fed.

But there are those, like you, who turn everyone who experiences your work into co-creators. You energize the most fundamental aspect of their deepest nature: You cause them to grant life.

Putting life into things that, in turn, causes others to also grant them life, is the fourth and, in my opinion, the most wonderful kind of magic. You turn other people into life-givers.