For this
past Halloween I dressed up in a costume for the first time in a long time. Maybe my lack of dress-up has something to do with the time the NYPD pulled up and drew their guns at me when I was waiting at a bus stop dressed as a cowboy with
a fake gun. Or maybe I deferred to my
kids to get dressed up, leaving playtime to the young. Or perhaps I was uninventive when it came to
creating my own costume and I was too cheap to buy one. But this year was different. And the whole process of dressing up
reawakened my views about superheroes, novels, movies, and role-playing
fantasy.
I went
trick or treating with my children – my son is nine and a half and my daughter
is three years younger. He dressed up as
the killer ghost from the Scream movies, though he’s never watched those
films. She was Fancy Nancy, based on the
children’s book character. How
appropriate for the child of book-loving parents. My wife dressed as a devil with a sign that
read PRADA, as in The Devil Wears Prada.
Another book reference! I went to
Party City and plunked down $70 for a costume and accessories. I went as a pimp, decked out in an outfit that
made me look like a 70’s ghetto businessman.
I was a walking scene straight out of Baretta or Kojak. I loved being someone else.
I think we all love being someone else. If only
we could do this every day, and to be someone different each sunrise. We spend a lot of time imagining we are
someone else. Just look at the
entertainment we take in – movies, books, and television. There is a clear pattern of each of us
willfully letting our minds escape, free to wander in the lives of others that
circumstances could never permit us to be.
Our literary arts and creative imaginations allow us to be whomever we
want, without risk, pain, investment, or repercussion.
It’s so
rewarding to feel like we’re super strong, beautiful, wealthy, brilliant or
powerful. It’s exciting to be a bad
person and not feel guilt or fear. It’s
great to live by a completely different ethical code in a make-believe world
without boundaries. Halloween allows us,
just as our entertainment does, to live a fantasy, and then permits us to
return safely and politely to the masks we wear in our daily lives.
We
really live a split life – the one of actions and reality, and the one that
unfolds in our thoughts and dreams. Are
we the loyal spouse who never cheats – or are we the stars of our own imagined
porn videos? Are we loving people who
give to charities – or are we the villains we dress up for on Halloween? Are we law-abiding people, or the sadistic
killers we secretly root for on screen?
Books in
particular are a great means to express our fantasies as writers and to live
them out as readers. The treasure that
lives inside our fiction is valuable to all who immerse themselves in books
that transport us to other eras, dimensions, and circumstances. Halloween lasts one might, but books are
forever.
I don’t
know that anyone would ever want to dress up as me for a day, but I know I love
to live as another with every novel consumed.
I wouldn’t really want to be anyone else but me in real life, but in fantasy land
it’s so nice to be anyone but me.
Who do
you want to be? Write your story now and
live out on paper and screen who you would love to become. I’m a pimp, I’m a cowboy, I’m a cop. I’m a baseball player, I’m a president, I’m a
monster. I’m anyone, everyone, and no
one at all. I am what I write and read,
getting to live 1000 lives in a lifetime.
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Brian
Feinblum’s views, opinions, and ideas expressed in this blog are his alone and
not that of his employer, Media Connect, the nation’s largest book promoter.
You can follow him on Twitter @theprexpert and email him at brianfeinblum@gmail.com.
He feels more important when discussed in the third-person. This is copyrighted
by BookMarketingBuzzBlog © 2014
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