I think most people want to believe in magic. They call it different things: miracles, luck, wizardry, the law of attraction. They (we, I ! ) want to believe that we are not imprisoned in this mundane life governed by logic and science. We want to believe that impossible things are possible if we only say the right words or think the right thoughts.  The world is full of amazing things. How else to explain those things than by magic?

The problems arise when you believe that you control the magic. An even bigger problem arises when other people believe that you control it. When the requested miracle fails to materialize, you are told that you didn’t pray hard enough or you didn’t go through the proper sequence of motions or you didn’t believe enough. And now the lack of a miracle is your own fault. But miracles are, by definition, rare.  If you look beneath the surface you find that the only people getting rich off this stuff are the people writing the books or leading the seminars.

I believe in magic; in the power of positive thinking. I believe in serendipity and luck. I choose to believe in these things, but mostly I believe in kindness. I tend to think that computers and television are magic. I believe that having a positive attitude is more enjoyable for everyone than being a curmudgeon. I believe that wonderful things can happen if you leave yourself open to them. And, clearly, someone wins the lottery. But I don’t believe that wishing will make these things come true. Maybe there are people who can levitate objects with their minds or tell the future (and maybe, someday, scientists will figure out why) but I am not one of them.  Ah, well.

I spend a lot of my time writing stories about magic and I hope that the stories are true on some level. But if you read the stories (not just mine, but all the magical stories) carefully, I think you will find that all of the (good) magic is derived from kindness. That is the kind of magic I believe in.

Boyd makes an excellent case for art in general and storytelling in particular as evolutionary adaptations. We do indeed need art to live successfully as a society and to advance as human beings. The second half of the book takes a detailed look at two distinctly different kinds of stories: the “historical” story represented by Homer’s Odyssey and the “personal” story represented by Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who.

Reading On the Origin of Story got me thinking about the suppression of stories; not so much the outright banning of specific books, but the way that dictatorial authorities always seek to stamp out creative thought. Artists and intellectuals are always the first to be crushed when a new regime takes control. It is not just governments that do this, but also some religions (often the same ones who insist on a literal translation of the Bible-go figure.)

Fiction allows us to imagine and then to test out our imaginings without having to physically experience the events. Just as the invention of writing meant that knowledge could be passed from one generation to the next, so fiction can be used to pass on possibilities.

One potter/poet/musician/magician/fiber artist/farmer asks another, “What would you do if you won a million dollars?” The second artist thinks for a minute before saying, “I think I would keep doing what I’m doing until the money runs out.”

I am lucky enough to know a number of dedicated artists of various disciplines: writers, painters, musicians, craftspeople, gardeners, farmers (yes, farmers.) These are, for the most part, people who know they will never be famous (though some certainly deserve to be.) Still, they keep working, learning, growing. One of the things they all have in common is that they “need” to be doing what they are doing. Another is that they all realize that creativity is a verb. When people say, “I want to be a writer.” You can be pretty sure they never will be. Real writers write. Put the verb in there and I know you are serious.

Get serious. Find what you “need” to do, and do it. Once you do, you will want to keep doing it way past “when the money runs out.”