I resorted to imagination during my childhood as a means to find joy in the chaos of my family life and the molestation I experienced. I was a fanatical reader as a child, from Dickens to Bronte, Verne to Edgar Rice Burroughs I sought refuge in the fantastical, the supernatural and science fiction. When I discovered comics the degree of my flourishing imaginary life was played out visually, and Marvel superheroes, The Hulk, Spiderman and The X-Men all pulled me into their universe in order to leave mine behind.
What magnetised me, and captured my attention was the visual depth and immersive narratives formulated in this form of story telling. It was a feast for eyes and mind alike. Whereas books offered me a subjective experience, my mind conjuring images from what I had known in the little life I had lived, comics granted me access to a multiverse where other imaginsts resided.
Their collective renditions ignited my ability to reach across the chaotic offerings of my own reality, and step across into worlds abound where I was always welcome, and often, never wished to leave. The effortlessness of this procedure, crossing between worlds would aid me later as I honed my own writing processes.
I step into the worlds of my characters, and from there i dictate what it is I am seeing, each voice that moves through me, Harmon Sueno, Lord Buford Somerset, Pablo Wairua (or the new novelist Dick Swabb or poet Iho Grace) takes me into a dream within a dream. It would be foolish of me to not recognise that this entire experience grew from a seed planted by reading comics as a child.
Over the years my process has deepened as my conscious awakening continues, allowing me to participate further than simply witnessing. Now I feel as much as I see. Emotions, thoughts, language all formulate inside of me making the interactivity between characters and I absolute. Having to ground myself back into the reality from which I came from can be for example, elating (if I’m going to some dark places) or tragic (if a character I’m writing about is having a revelatory experience or accomplishing great feats of courage).
For me, what once could be considered pure escapism due to the world I occupied, is now become a destination in order to appreciate the vastness of the multiverse that exists in our imaginations.