How can I not write about AVATAR?

There's a movie out right now called Avatar. If you didn't know that, read a newspaper or magazine every now and again, for crying out loud. Having heard good things from people in my life who are decent judges of film, I went to see this new flick with some friends on New Year's Day. In 3-D, if you were wondering.

Holy Schnikey! Oh my goodness! Wonder! Tears! Joy!

The thing simply blew me away. There was a moment when I found my jaw dropped, and tears flowing at the beauty of the fictitious planet Pandora. I was impressed and stunned by all kinds of brilliantly breathtaking attributes of this planet. The flora and fauna of Pandora were bright and intricately detailed, and you could actually see them and felt like you could touch them.

I could rant and rave for a while, but I don't want to spoil anything or prattle on repeating your own experience of this movie. On the other hand, note that I am writing about a movie. This, I assure you, is a rare occurrence. As my sister said to me in surprise at my approval of Avatar, "You don't usually love movies." (That's her nice way of saying that I usually pick them apart. Oops.) Why I'm excited about Avatar goes beyond the movie itself. In the last couple of days, I realized when I say I loved Avatar, I'm really saying I'm thrilled out of my mind about the creative possibilities that it has opened.

The last year or so has changed my mind about the created product. Though I grew up reading, watching television and movies, listening to music and reproducing it on the piano, I never really understood the point. And let's face it: while I'm creative, I'm also ridiculously practical, and so part of me felt guilty about the fact that I spent copious amounts of time creating and "consuming" the creations of others. I was confounded by the job description of my friend Linnea, an intelligent-times-ten and absurdly glorious artist:

"I make something totaly useless, yet absolutely necessary."

Huh? What? Useless and necessary can go together? In time, and with the steady encouragement of another artist friend, I am coming to agree with Linnea. I don't have any complex rational proofs or anything, but for me it comes down to this: When I read Tolkien or Lewis, when I listen to Debussy, and when I watched Avatar for the first time, something deep inside of me comes alive. This little creature--maybe it is Imagination, or Beauty--may remain confined in the little box of my life where I am reading or listening or watching, but it is more likely to continue to wiggle about in my head after it has been awakened. And soon, it stays with me throughout my day, and lends to the most common experience a sense of wonder and possibility.

The other thing about the products of artists is that they give you a glimpse inside the artist. An artist finds a way to create, outside of their imaginations, what exists inside their imagination. Having a very active imagination myself, and also having tried my hand at creation many a time, I can safely say that this is very tricky. Bringing a whole person into being using only words? Forming a crispy onion skin with the strokes of a pencil and the round root vegetable on flat paper? Flooding a cathedral with water using notes on a piano? It's HARD! It's time-consuming and imperfect and sometimes costly. Yet, when it is done, there is something that never was before.

This is why I loved Avatar. I know millions of dollars were put into its creation, at least hundreds of people contributed to it, and it still remains a cliche story with an anti-war agenda. I don't care. Avatar changes the game, because it made a world that doesn't exist, with its own culture and biology, in more clarity than I've ever seen. And it's beautiful. More!