Laurie Spiegel and Imagination

Imagination is something else I worry about a lot these days. I think it might be getting lost. Everybody is so bombarded and overloaded with media coming at us that we don't have the same access to our imaginations as we used to. Back when I made The Expanding Universe, I would go through my record collection and flip back and forth through my LPs. There was something I wanted to listen to that I couldn’t quite put my finger on, something that would sustain and keep moving in a certain way, and I found that I didn't have anything like it. I could picture the sound in my mind, but I couldn’t find it on a record. So I was led by my internal auditory imagination. There was a piece developing there, taking form, and it was something I wanted to hear. If I'd had a record with something like it, I would have just played the record, but instead, I had to make it.

Sounds kind of like a do-it-yourself mentality.

 Right, there was a lot more of that mentality toward making artistic and musical stuff, experiences that didn't exist yet. It was like there were new empty worlds that had yet to be populated. A lot of these newer musical forms that are popular now are more like editing and processing-based: new works are made out of pre-existing works. I'm not against any of these new forms, but a lot of pretty wonderful music and art came out of staring at the blank canvas. Sometimes it’s pure silence that lets you listen to what happens inside your own head. I'm not advocating meditation or anything drastic, but I think an occasional media fast is probably a really good idea for people in the arts.

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Source: Laurie Spiegel interviewed by Dena Yago in Sex Magazine