It was an autumn night, with rain sprinkling down like cool petals of water. Headlights danced on the pavement.

I was tucked inside a warm, semi-posh restaurant, at an event celebrating a film that a friend of mine had just directed. I was talking to a young woman in white. Her outfit proclaimed “cute,” but her world-weary eyes informed me that “cute” was over years ago.

“I hate fantasy movies,” she pronounced in a self-congratulatory manner, as if fantasy equaled stuck in adolescence, which equaled, in her mind, living your life in an emotional trailer park.

She punctuated her distaste for fantasy films with a list: Lord of the Rings, Shrek, Groundhog Day, Toy Story….

As I listened to her condemn all fantasy, I wished I was a time-cop. I wanted to journey back to the childhood of this woman and arrest whomever had applied a 10,000 watt stun-gun to her ability to dream.

I didn't tell Cute But Weary the truth: That of course she believed in fantasy—just fantasies that had been created by others; fantasies that had been around long enough, and with which enough people agreed, that they had been relabeled as “reality.”

Consider a few cases in point.

Our notion of romantic love is a fantasy, a cultural construction. It has its original small seeds in ancient Greece, and then the notion reemerged and was fully created by the Troubadours, who developed it over the course of 200 years, starting at the end of the eleventh century. The idea of love received further elaboration and development in the Renaissance, wrangled a home run out of Shakespeare, and now love is here to stay.

I lived in Ghana (West Africa) for year. There was no notion of romantic love there. Men and women hooked up and married, of course, but it was principally about economic survival, biology, and tradition. Why no romantic love? Because no one had created the fantasy there.

Christmas was a small scratch of a holiday until Charles Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol in 1843. His idea of Christmas as a time of charity, of family, of gift-giving, and of celebration swept through England. Audiences there clamored to have Dickens read the story aloud at one gathering after another. Eight stage adaptations were in production within two months of the book's publication.

The book's popularity spread like wildfire across the Atlantic and quickly transformed America as well. Eventually the rest of the world completely embraced Dickens' fantasy as well and enshrined it as the living reality we call Christmas.

Houses skewed toward the dark and claustrophobic until Frank Lloyd Wright had a fantasy of a new kind of open architecture that made music out of space and sunlight. His fantasy became today's reality.

In saying that she liked only “reality,” Cute But Weary had simply chickened out, letting others create her fantasies. Actually, the diagnosis was even worse. She was a closet quasi-zombie, living out the fantasies of dead people.

Traipsing through the world with an outward sparkle but a zombified inner core, recycling the faded life-blood of those who are long gone, is no way to forge life into an adventure.

We all live out fantasies. They're either our own, or ones borrowed from or imposed upon us by someone else. Who will create tomorrow's fantasies? What about you, my friend? What visions are you waiting to unfurl?

Time is ticking. As soon as you can, please find a way to splash your universe in front of us all. Maybe the tools in this book will be of help. If not, perhaps you've got a strategy of your own.

I'm being completely sincere here. Do you really think you have the right not to treat me and everyone else who's interested to your imagination and your insights? Don't you think we hunger to have our world replenished, reinvented, expanded, and enriched? For all of us, time on Earth passes too quickly. Please don't deny us your gifts.

And so, the first kind of magic is creating new worlds for us to inhabit, or expanding or enriching our existing world. This magic is your ability to paint new worlds for us to live within, or your bringing us new insights into life's breadth, depth, complexity, and sometimes humor.

The politicians aren't going to do these things for us. The newscasters aren't going to do them either. Only artists can. And that means you.

There is a secret land where smiles are born. Some call it childhood. Others call it living in the present and future, and not being fixated on the trials of yesterday.

Call it what you will, it's easy to rob someone of their ability to smile. Just toss some problems, losses, betrayals, and fears their way, and the door to that beautiful land can be temporarily or even permanently locked shut.

There are far too many people, in the news business and in politics, who are determined that no one should ever live long in the land of smiles. These people can't wait to assault you with fears and worries that they're eager for you to embrace. It's possible to get an entire population so worked up and anxious that it can be a gorgeous day outside and no one will even notice.

And yet, even when the door is locked to the secret land where smiles are born, that land is always there. It's just a breath away.

It's easy to rob people of their smiles, but so hard to bring them back once their happiness has been torn away. Bringing people back to smiling and play is the second kind of magic.

Who possesses the key to lead huge groups of people right back to the land where smiles are born? It's you. You've got the key to the door. And that makes you a magician.

But a magician who doesn't practice his or her magic isn't much of a magician. There are those who've been away from that secret land far too long. Won't you open the door and help them smile?

Have you ever seen someone rebuild, repaint, and polish a classic car until it's “cherry?” People stare, attracted. The person restoring that car literally injected life into it, and people can actually feel it.

Have you ever been to someone's house who had decorated it in their own personal way, who kept it clean but not sterile, and who filled the space with life and love? You can actually feel the warm glow when you walk in. That person literally gave the house life.

A large Van Gogh exhibit passed through my town a few years ago. I dutifully stood in the seemingly endless outdoor line of those who waited to become part of the cliché cattle-call of impressionist looky-loos.

The day was sweltering, and an hour and a half passed. By the time the line finally inched forward enough so that I and those around me could actually step foot in the museum, everyone was in a foul mood. I feared I was about to become part of history in the making: the famous Los Angeles Van Gogh riots of the early 21st century.

Well, the riot never happened, but I wouldn't have been surprised if it did. People were so cross with each other that they easily erupted in petty arguments.

But as soon as they stepped into the first room of paintings, a hush fell over everyone. I mean absolute and total silence. Looking at the paintings, this previously irritated group was suddenly speechless with awe. People were moved in a way they never had been before, as they were lifted onto the wings of Van Gogh's rich and layered vision, and as they drank in his symphony of feelings.

Not only did Van Gogh give his paintings life, but now these paintings, just like the beautiful house and the polished vintage hot rod, continued to radiate emotion, radiate insight, radiate energy, and radiate depth. In short, the paintings radiated life.

We can put life into things, and those things can, in turn, continue to give life whenever they're experienced. And that's real magic. It's the third kind of magic, and you, my friend, are the magician.

True art turns those who experience it into artists themselves, for true art solicits participation.

Let's say we're watching a film. Alison enters the apartment she shares with Chloe. Chloe has bought some white orchids and is trying to find the right place to put them.

Alison knows that Chloe had had a date with Zak, a new guy, earlier that day.

Alison: How'd it go with Zak?

Chloe puts the orchids on an end table, 
satisfied. She turns to Alison.

Chloe (smiles): I usually go for yellow
orchids, but I thought, "Hey, why not live 
dangerously?"

There's a huge gap here that you have to fill in. You see that Chloe's in a good mood—so good that she's smiling, she bought flowers, and she even overrode her habitual pattern as to what color orchids to buy.

Therefore, in your mind, you fill in that the date must have gone very well.

You create the missing portions. Thus, when reading the dialogue, you co-create the story. You've been made into an artist yourself.

Or you're playing a console or PC game. You're exploring a destroyed castle. You hear a roar in the other room, and you had earlier been warned that monsters were on the prowl. In your mind, you fill in that there's a monster in the other room, and perhaps you even vaguely picture it. So it's you, not the game, who creates the monster at that second. You give it life. You have been made into an artist.

Let's take that game out of the console and insert another—a science fiction example.

You've just gone to Venus—the real Venus, teeming with a thriving civilization. They've projected the image of a deserted planet for thousands of years in order to fool Earth, as self-protection. They do this because they were invaded by Earth in Earth's first epoch, 75,000 years ago. In self-defense, they destroyed Earth's warrior culture then and erased that culture's remnants from our planet. All knowledge of that first epoch have been erased.

Here, on Venus, you find that each of the four directions have a history, and are labeled male or female. North is for warriors and is male. West is for dreamers and is female. South is for sorcerers and is male. East is for freedom bringers and is female.

Each day belongs to one of the four directions, and the days (and the directions they're associated with) rotate in sequence. Depending on which one of the four types of days it is, your weapons behave completely differently. So do your perceptions. The nature of events even change.

For instance, on East (freedom bringer) days, colors are brighter. On North (warrior) days, danger comes. On South (sorcerer) days, you can teleport yourself over miles of land.

Perhaps, as you continue on in the game, you'll learn more. But let's stop right here. I talked of an earlier Earth epoch, when warriors of Earth invaded the civilization on Venus….

There's a huge gap here that you'll start to fill in. What was that earlier culture on Earth like? What was its relationship to and history with Venus? As you begin to imagine and dream up these new elements, you bring them to life. You co-create them.

And how about the idea that the different directions on Venus have different histories and different qualities, and that they affect many aspects of this world, depending on which of the four types of days it is? In your mind, you'll assemble all these elements together in a way that starts to make sense. In short, although there are plenty of gaps, you'll fill them in. You create this world just as much as the game designer or writer. You give this world life.

When you see one of the Lord of the Rings films and find yourself caught up in the story, you're granting those characters life. When you play Vice City and find yourself laughing as your helicopter swoops in on an enemy, you're granting the game life. When you look at a Van Gogh painting and feel moved, that's because you're granting the painting life.

Earlier I said that an artist grants life. But real art solicits co-creation from the viewer or participant. Actually, there is no such thing as a “viewer,” for anyone who fills in a painting, or movie characters, or a science fiction world with life is a co-creator and thus a participant. In games, participation is extreme because so much co-creation is elicited.

This book is simply about ways of making that co-creation more emotionally rich and dimensional.

There are those who would like to see a nation full of passive spectators, easily manipulated so they will swallow any news or policy they're force-fed.

But there are those, like you, who turn everyone who experiences your work into co-creators. You energize the most fundamental aspect of their deepest nature: You cause them to grant life.

Putting life into things that, in turn, causes others to also grant them life, is the fourth and, in my opinion, the most wonderful kind of magic. You turn other people into life-givers.

And so, magicians, this book of special tools draws to a close. I trust your magician's cabinet is hopefully full of all sorts of new implements you can use to wield your unique gifts.

Remember the four types of magic you create:

Hopefully, with the tools in this book, you can do all four of the preceding more artfully, and in a way that's uniquely your own.

I consider myself the luckiest of all men, for day after day, I spend my time either making magic or joining my alchemical talents together with fellow sorcerors to make magic that is more complex and powerful than any one of us could ignite alone.

I'm always surprised and gladdened to find that the world has a way of rolling out a rosy welcoming mat to magicians with honed talents, professional discipline, and a big heart. Are you one? If so, then thanks for pitching in, for the world certainly needs your gifts. And if you're not a practicing magician quite yet, we've got a place saved for you at the table.

I've laid out a few magician's tools in this book. I hope you'll take them for a spin and let me know how it all works out. This world is definitely in need of some additional magic. I'm eager to experience yours.

David Freeman