Layers Of Meaning Revisited

As so often happens, as soon as I write about something, something else happens to change it.

As I wrote about layers of meaning  (http://fatherdaughtertalk.blogspot.com/2013/11/layers-of-meaning.html)  and read about Orson Scott Card, it became clear that there was an undeniable hierarchy of meaning in the act of writing Ender's Game.

As Mr. Card was focused on the issue of "leadership", particularly about the Army of the Potomac in the Civil War, he also gave us a treatise on Gaming, Play, and a warning about letting Play become like Work.
(More later...)

When I wrote to a friend about the film the morning after having seen it, I sat down, took keyboard in hand, sucked thoughtfully at the end of it, dipped it into the inkwell, as I thought "children... soldiers...", and suddenly I realized that we did indeed have children soldiers in our world.

We have Joseph Kony and children soldiers, and once again Art Trumps the painfully slow-mo of Reality!

There are undeniable "Layers of Meaning" within the author's mind. One picks up a pen to write as one wanders slowly about the living room of the mind; it has been shut up for a while, the owners are in Europe, maybe, and there are white sheets covering all the furniture, the mirrors, and the lighting fixtures.
One starts to put pen to paper and - whooosh! - a wind suddenly peels back all those sheets, uncovering vast details beneath!

If we cannot do our Art - that at which we may play and with which we are free - we are slaves of boredom and the dismal economics of the world.

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