Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain.

I just added a thingy to the 'Did you know...' wossname about the suspension of disbelief. I like making up aphorisms, but this seems particularly appropriate today. Take blogging, for example. (I simply cannot believe that someone has contributed the verb 'to blog' to our beautiful language... couldn't we reverse engineer Latin instead? What about French, or Esperanto? No one's using that.)

Blogging (sigh) is based on the proposition that if I write stuff on a website, then people will be interested. This flies in the face of reason... it doesn't just fly, it marches up to, slaps and spits in the face of reason, probably dislocating the nose and caving in the cheeks of reason while it's at it. I have multiple family members... none of whom ever listen to anything I say (unless it's something along the lines of "do you want some money?"). Yet here I am, writing a 'blog' that, apparently, more than a few people not only read, but seem to enjoy. Go figure. They tell me my writing is powerful and entertaining (well funny actually, and I'm assuming they mean 'funny' in a 'ha ha' sense, but I don't mind that much either way). Here's where my suspension of disbelief is called upon. This makes me feel good. I'm told I can talk about pretty much whatever I want in a blog. Where to begin? See? I neatly solved that problem by having already begun.

Suspension of Disbelief is very useful stuff. They should sell it by the bottle, but they'd have to come up with a better name: 'Belief' maybe? How about gullability, naievete, faith or innocence? 'Innocence' has a nice ring, and it clearly sets it apart from perfumes which generally tend to be anything but innocent. So... Innocence by the bottle, very useful stuff. Of course it would get into the wrong hands... then what?

Of course a 'suspension of disbelief' is different from a 'leap of faith'. Somehow one is more credulous than the other. A suspension includes the expectation that it will end. It is temporary. You think yes, I believe this now, but I know I'm going to believe something else later. One is "fake it 'til you make it" the other is "fake it for a while". A suspension of disbelief lets us stay aloof, all-knowing, it says "yes, but" while a leap of faith only says yes. A suspension of disbelief is less committed, and it's important to remember that in case you get committed yourself. At some point you have to get off the ride. Hmmm... that seems vaguely disconcerting that does.

A leap of faith lets us accept the duality of Christ. A suspension of disbelief makes us cry when we watch Eowyn say goodbye to Theoden. The suspension is a kind of fleeting faith. It modifies a moment not a lifetime.

If you want to enjoy fantasy, well fiction of any sort really, you'll be needing a healthy dose of suspended belief. Never forget that the so-called real world contains a lot of fantasy. Lying on a tropical beach for a week sounds pretty fantastic to me. The suggestion that I will ever experience anything like that would fill me with disbelief... so... where's my bottle of Innocence?

Note: Art © 2006, Hotz & Crossby. Used with permission.