Music connoisseurs will recognize the title of this post from a Dave Edmunds song. Very much a high school thing for me–back when WNEW-FM in New York was a rock station, Edmunds was a staple with tunes like ‘Girls Talk’, ‘Crawlin’ From The Wreckage’ and, of course, ‘From Small Things (Big Things One Day Come)’. That song is about a small town girl who dreams of big things, and achieves them through a combination of good looks, wildness and bold action. Kind of like the influence of children’s fantasy on adult fantasy, if you think about it: small, pretty ideas that grow and, through exposure to life and the wide, wide world, become fully realized things.
See, I think children’s fantasy and adult fantasy have a relationship to each other that’s inverse to the real world: children’s fantasy gives birth to adult fantasy. I don’t think fantasy is necessarily inspired by fantasy stories (although, as a kid, my reading included Hugh Lofting’s Doctor Dolittle books and the first few Chronicles of Narnia). I think fantasy is a distillation of ideas and experiences from reading, movies and life, and the dreams that come from figuring out how to escape these influences or how to better them. It starts early in life and becomes more refined as we get older, in the way some of us developed a taste for whiskey or scotch. (more…)
Read More...