Trains of Trust--Drawing on the Imagination

At age 17 I heard an imaginative phrase in a popular song that has stayed with me ever since.  The song was called “Stoned Soul Picnic” by a vocal group, The Fifth Dimension. It was written by a song writer named Laura Nyro. You might not have heard of her, but if you listen to sixties music, you’ve heard songs she wrote:  “And When I Die,” done by Blood, Sweat and Tears; “Eli’s Coming,” Three Dog Night; “Sweet Blindness,” Fifth Dimension; “Stoney End,” Barbra Streisand. She sang and release albums, but she is much better known as a song-writer.

Laura Nyro

The phrase I heard was “trains of trust.” 

The lyric in "Stoned Soul Picnic" went as follows:

                                There’ll be trains of blossoms (there’ll be trains of blossoms)

                                There’ll be trains of music (there’ll be music)

                                There’ll be trains of trust, trains of golden dust

                                Come along and surrey on sweet trains of thought

The other things she mentioned that there would be “trains of”—blossoms, music, golden dust, and thought—I could envision. You might have a train or string of flowers, a train or sequence of musical compositions, a train or column of golden dust floating through the air. Everyone has trains of thought. But what did she mean by “trains of trust”?

I thought about it and pondered it for years. I still don’t know what it means. But I do know it is beautiful and imaginative. Imaginative images such as this one are the key to writing—to writing a song, a poem, or fiction. Imagination is especially necessary to writing speculative fiction.

Early in his career, Neil Gaiman was given an assignment by the BBC to write a screenplay about homelessness.  He wrote Neverwhere. That novel is a fantasy, one of my favorites, and one of the best, in my opinion. But is it about homelessness? Gaiman didn’t do a straight-up drama about people living on the streets. He wrote about an imaginative world that exists in tandem with the real world of London. There are vampires, monsters, angels, supernatural beings, magic, and sorcery. But is it about homelessness?

Old Bailey in Neverwhere

Yes. Homeless people get Richard into London Below from London Above (does this suggest class?). The people there are poor, shabby, and live in abandoned cellars, on the streets, and in deserted buildings. They barter rather than buying and selling. There is violence and danger. They live in quasi-tribal groups and exchange favors as a kind of currency. They dress outlandishly in clothes that don’t match and are too big. They live, like the Marquis of Carabas, in lean-to huts. Much of the pain, anger, and displacement that the homeless know can be seen in the citizens of London Below. Gaiman’s use of imagination made for a more powerful statement on homelessness than if he had done a straightforward story about it. And it became, in its novel form, a best-seller.

Anyone who has read speculative fiction knows the imaginative creations of Lewis, Tolkien, Heinlein, and James Oliver Rigney—add the name of your favorite here. Imagination is key to successful speculative writing. In my own novella, Strange Brew, a 1970s rock singer who has opened for the Rolling Stones meets up with a witch. Witch and rock singer make for some real imaginative passages. In The Sorceress of the Northern Seas, I get to do world-building with a mix of sorcery, goddesses, the Romans and Celts, and a girl to whom nature is more than willing to grant magical powers.

Door from Neverwhere

How do we gain imagination? We encounter it. We read books and we watch films and we take chances in our writing. To write imaginatively, to walk the line between something being dazzlingly innovative (like Stardust, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, or Stranger in a Strange Land) or silly, overdone, and bombastic (no examples here, but you’ve encountered them) is to know what truly imaginative writing looks like. I wish there were a short cut, but there is not.

Let your imagination run wild. But imagination

can run in the wrong direction and it can get lost

in elaborate world-building that is often not in

the least imaginative--not to say no fun to read

--not to say boring. If you let your imagination

run wild, know something about the shape of the track.

Check out this link and more (on Amazon). 

I think this and all my writing quite imaginative.