The brain is a very cool place. It’s like a big house, with lots of corridors and rooms that go off to the side. Sometimes you find entire wings to places you didn’t know were there. Frequently the doors to the rooms are closed and you can miss them; you have to open the doors and look inside. And there you see lots of stuff—things lying around, old pictures, more furniture frequently with lots of drawers and even more stuff stashed inside.
I think my favorite metaphoric image for my own brain is the Ghibli house in Tokyo, which we visited last summer. There’s a picture of it here, though this doesn’t really do justice to the feeling of wonder and possibility the site gave me. Hayao Miyazaki knows all about the brain and its potential, I’ll bet. His movies—always about the magic of the imagination in some way or another—make frequent use of images of labyrinthine houses and spaces. These can have their nightmarish qualities, but only on the first come. Once the house is accepted and explored, it has absolutely everything you’ll ever need or want in it—and then some. There’s always something transformative about the space. You just need to have the courage to explore—a theme frequently figured in his movies.
2 comments:
Mmmm I love Miyazaki! I have just discovered his films, in the past weeks. Amazing!
I often dream of architecture. Houses (and the symbolic that they suggest) are big in my dreams. I had an amazing one just last night, a huge rambling home, made of dark wood, with extended, covered, walk-ways, that spidered across a rich, hilly country, populated by dinosaurs and aboriginal ranch-hands. A peaceful and beautiful place, aside from the occasional (not really scary) T-rex.
Very cool! I dream of architecture, too, but I wish I did it even more. I'm going to rewatch all the Miyazaki films now, I think, starting with Howl's Moving Castle, because that's the one I know the least and yet it's all about the architecture. I'd loved the original book, too--it's by Diana Wynne Jones, one of my favorite authors of all time. I've read everything she's written.
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