Imagine that …
one day a little dragon named Ralphie came to you and took you on a journey that not only was an adventure in itself, but also showed you that the whole world is a realer-than-real stage on which we are meant to live out mythic, heroic adventures … and that by way of exercising this mythical imagination we could recreate the world we explored as children.
Imagine that …
we had the words that could start those worlds of our childhood imaginations spinning again.
Imagine that …
we could save the world with a pen and some paper and some ideas of how it could be more just and more beautiful and more like a real home.
Imagine that …
as adults, having lost some of the magic of youth but having gained the wisdom of experience, we could now reshape the world and the future, and make it realer-than-real.
It must be noted …
that books sometimes are not just books, sometimes they’re portals to other realities,
and that writers sometimes are not just writers. Sometimes they’re wizards, or shaman, or peripatetic philosopher princes who can create magical kingdoms. They can be pied pipers, taking you up to higher climes with the sweep of their melodic prose, or they can be Johnny Appleseed characters, planting ideas that will later bear fruit.
The ancients knew that narrative rules the world …
and that those who can persuade others through reason and argument do not have to resort to violence. The ancients also knew that violence is always lurking on the edges of civility and that sometimes sound reason and good arguments don’t always carry the day—but ultimately, they do rule the narrative of good and just kingdoms.
This matters …
in that children can and should be taught to cherish these values of imaginative reason and absentminded logic over violence early in life.
But the ideas behind Prince Ralphie are more than that, it’s that we all can be taught that what we say and therefore what we think about the world can indeed make the world magical.
It’s not that we’ve lost our childhoods, it’s that we’ve lost the ability to think imaginatively, magically, about one of the greatest gifts in life, that we are natural-born adventurers—here to seek the Grail.
Given all that—if you were a writer who had drunk from the Grail cup—wouldn’t you want to share it, the wisdom you had gained, with your friends and neighbors and loved ones?
Thereby we come to the ‘Project’ of making Prince Ralphie a cultural icon for the town of Louisville, Colorado.