Writers Circle Prompt: The Art of the Possible

 First draft:

I.

It turns out that the art of the possible isn’t about art at all.  It’s about political pragmatism.  Politicians are said to use it when they give up long range goals to take up the goals that are possible given their time and place. For example, Republicans spent 40+ years with small local goals that led finally to the larger goal of electing a president who would dismantle the liberal state and democracy.  They are now, unfortunately, on the verge of turning over the government and its policies to millionaires for whom profit is all.  

Despite the state of politics, the art of the possible in the arts appears to have no limits except that of the human body itself.  That is, if the main agency of drama is the actor--as it is in my branch of the arts--a a staged drama would be limited only by the actors' dexterity of movement.  But once you add technology to written drama and the stage, what the actor can portray in that marriage increases exponentially.  It may even enter the realm of what is inconceivable and impossible.

Science fiction and fantasy does this on the page, without the restrictions of staging.  A human meets a friendly extraterrestrial and enters a whole new world of possibility in which the imagination expands in characters and in readers.  In film, we saw this in Mary Poppins and the Jedi in Star Wars.  Technology has a powerful home in film.  And film expands the possibilities of what can be depicted on stage and on the screen.  Interior worlds from Hitchcock’s Spellbound and Vincente Minelli's American In Paris (Gershwin) illustrate.

The art of the possible, then, is limited only by the material it employs.  Putting more than one type of matter in the pot increases possibilities.  On paper, collage and dada show this best. 3-D Constructs can incorporate amazing surprises.  Move an actor or dancer into 3-D space limits possibility until technology and film expand the possibilities again.  Remove the human/animal agent of action, and there are no limits except the imagination.

Given freedom, art—creation—is limited only by the minds and hearts of the artist and creative team.  This is the freedom artists expected when activist communists created the Soviet Socialist Republic, but instead found that art was restricted to that which promoted life under the new administration.  Realism was required, though the realism depicted conditions that were not yet established.  Fantasy.

II.

Let's try dialogue:

It is possible that I won't finish all I want to do in one lifetime. Do I then get another chance?  

Maybe.

What does it depend on?

Losing the "I."  

I will not remember who or what I was, though I might have a feeling that I've been here before?  

Yes, it is a stranger who undertakes the unfinished work, as soon as that person discovers what it is.

And the previous me evaporates into the spaces that matter and spirit go to replenish themselves.  With no sense of continuity?  

Yes.  Just trust the process.  Live fully.  Don't save anything up.  That won't help.

But what if it could help?  What if I left a narrative which the next person could find.  Or left clues.  Like, remember the bag of clues in the movie Paycheck? The protagonist loses his memory, but he leaves clues so he could discover the big task he had to do.  And he does.  And he is able to save the planet!

Is that your unfinished work, to save the planet?

It could be.  Reverse climate change, and evaporate the money of the billionaires so they have to find another way to live.

In your dreams.

Ok, in my dreams.  But dream is the first step to the possibility of becoming real.

I think you should just do what you are called to do in this space and time, and let the future take care of itself.  The past, too.  People should stop meddling with God's plan.

Do you actually believe there is a God who has a plan?

Yes, though it may not be a plan you might choose.

Think, though.  What if the plan included people like me who tried to communicate with those who came after them?  Remember the prophets?

Yes.  But come on now.  Don't make me laugh.  Just work with the people around you with integrity and purpose--and we'll see where it goes.