![]() And he must hold to this illusion even when he knows it is not true,” says John Steinbeck. “The writer must believe that what he is doing is the most important thing in the world. It is called good and evil.”Īnd the author Alan Moore’s in the house too, extending that to another huge, yet connected philosophy: “As far as I can see, it's not important that we have free will, just as long as we have the illusion of free will to stop us going mad.”Ī couple of other writers are around too. Reaching for his regular’s beer tankard, Friedrich Nietzsche is here too, opening up a whole other can of worms, particularly religion, when adding that: “There is another old illusion. Yet joining him, Arthur Koestler adds that “nothing is more sad than the death of an illusion.” Almost certainly then, illusions are something we need to create or cling to, in order to cope with grim reality, to manage or, just as much, to be managed. The great linguistic and political thinker Noam Chomsky declares that, “If we choose, we can live in a world of comforting illusion.” It’s a tempting, and regular choice. What kinds of perception or illusions are emotional? Pulitzer Prize-winning author for historical fiction (how apt for this topic) Herman Wouk is here too, however declaring that “illusion is an anodyne, bred by the gap between wish and reality”.īut while that remark is made as a cold abstract, surely what powers the idea of illusion are emotions, and they colour the feel of any song about this idea. Getting the first serving, we’ve already heard from Albert Einstein, but with his theory of relativity he adds that “the distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.” So with that in mind, we’re doing this topic last year and next year but also now. ![]() This could turn into a vast topic, and be applied literally everything, but the key to unlocking it is that the song must consciously play on that idea in some way.įirst up, as ever there’s a gathering of vigorous minds visiting the Bar (a place that is, of course, indisputably real) eager to discuss this idea, and as succinctly as possible across a range of contexts. They might come through in many forms – visual, perhaps from random tricks of the light to those cleverly constructed, auditory, olfactory, or via distorted memory, or any combination, as well as those made by society itself, such as via gossip and hearsay, the media, and other willing or careless misrepresentation. We’ve had some slightly overlapping topics in the past, such as authenticity and fakery, or the invisible, but illusions are tangibly (and intangibly) on different ground. This topic, is something ideally that’s central to lyrics of any song nominated, or at least playing a prominent role. When entering a certain frame of mind and reference, everything is illusion.īut if only that applied to my latest gas and electricity bills.įrom cold reality to lightbulb moments of perception or simply being gaslit, this week then our song topic is all about juggling this very idea, playing with what is real or not in the interplay of our senses, and how we perceive. Countries, borders, races, individuals, ownership? In theory, all just a human construct. “What if everything is an illusion and nothing exists? In that case, I definitely overpaid for my carpet.” – Woody AllenĮverything, arguably, is just a matter of perception, fizzling up through the extraordinary distorting prisms of our senses, our brains designed to phase down the constant pounding and pulsing of blood behind our eyes and in our ears, instead to reach for distraction, to create patterns and stories, to see and recognise faces, and to sense and snuggle as comfortably as possible into our strange worlds. “Illusion is the first of all pleasures.” – Voltaire ![]() ![]() Consciousness is the illusion.” – Craig Bruce “Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.” – Albert Einstein
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