The Secret World of Doing Nothing by Löfgren Orvar Ehn Billy

Author:Löfgren, Orvar, Ehn, Billy [Ehn, Billy; Löfgren, Orvar]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-520-94570-8
Publisher: University of California Press
Published: 2010-08-09T16:00:00+00:00

The World Turned into Wilderness

In a later generation of daydreamers, from the time of World War II, we meet another contrasting couple, Anne and Jerome. Anne’s daydreams we can follow in her diaries, which she started keeping at the age of thirteen, in 1942. Like Linotte, she too includes postcards, photos, and drawings in her diary and experiments with different forms of writing. She too wants to be an author. The diary is her secret friend, Kitty, someone with whom to share her longings. She fantasizes about boys and possible romantic love affairs, and about her future as an adult.

While Anne is working on her diary Jerome is in the U.S. Army, but he finds that his childhood daydreams are still with him. During the many long periods of waiting during war he continues to fantasize about the imaginary football world he has built up over many years.

Jerome is not a diary writer. We know his daydreams from his later attempts to reconstruct his intensive fantasies as a child and teenager (Singer 1976). He remembers his early daydreaming career playing with toys or makeshift props, talking out loud and actively playing the part of the various characters. Growing up in the United States in the 1930s, radio, movies, books, and comics provided important daydreaming materials. At the age of nine, like Charlotte Brontë, he creates a detailed world of his own, choosing his hero from a series of boys’ books. His fantasy hero, Poppy Ott, develops a sports career, a world of endless adventures and games that Jerome continued to elaborate on for many years. Like the kingdom of Angria, a whole baseball empire develops. Jerome drew entire league series, sketching highlights from imaginary games and maintaining statistics on the achievements of his imaginary players.

As Jerome grew, so did Poppy and his fabulous career. But Jerome also had other fantasy heroes, from the adventures he developed with the help of Tarzan of the Apes to a figure he called “The Senator,” a political hero who could do no wrong. With a fantasy about being a fantastic piano player and composer Jerome also created his own imaginary world of music, opera singers, and composers. Jerome himself was a bad piano player, but as he banged away at the instrument he could hear the most wonderful music and symphonies emerge in his interior soundscape.

Like Charlotte’s hero Zamorna, or Anaïs Nin’s Shadow, Poppy Ott accompanied Jerome year after year, but Poppy Ott also provided Jerome entry to an academic career. Jerome Singer became a professor of psychology and a pioneer researcher of daydreams.

Anne Frank started her diary in June 1942, on her thirteenth birthday. Soon after that fears of Nazi prosecution forced her Jewish family to go into hiding in Amsterdam. For two years they lived in the confinement of an attic, under constant threat of discovery. In spite of these conditions Anne’s daydreams resembled those of other teenage girls. She created a special dreamscape by decorating her tiny personal space with her film star collection and picture postcards, and she fantasized about becoming a Hollywood star.

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