“Imagination” is the fourteenth track on Sean Mendes’ debut studio album, Handwriting, which was released on April 14, 2015.
The hero of the song is a young and extremely indecisive guy. He watches every day as the girl he is secretly in love with walks past his house. He wants to call out to his beloved, to tell her how beautiful she is. But he is timid and remains silent. Only in his dreams does he imagine that he and his beloved live happily ever after, walking along the embankment, holding hands.
Remember how it was in the poem by Athanasius Fet?
I will not tell you anything,
And you will not be disturbed in the slightest,
And of what I say in silence,
I shall not dare to hint.
Truly, the theme of unrequited, silent love is eternal. It’s much easier to sigh and dream in silence, deifying your beloved. Dreams do not give you “turn away”, not ridicule your feelings and scatter your heart in the wind ashes with a couple of caustic phrases and venomous taunts.
Plus, the imagination always pictures the desired partner ideal – a kind of angel with fluffy wings, golden halo over his head, lively laughter and mischievous smile. Surely this is how the hero imagines his beloved. But he does not take into account that in fact the girl – a person of flesh and blood, like everyone else. With its problems, complexes, fears, and nuances of character. In fact, the hero fell in love with the image that he came up with himself. And what if, upon closer acquaintance, the ideal image will shatter into many small pieces? It will be like in the poem by Edward Asadov:
“And I didn’t think you were like that!”
Of course, the hero didn’t think. After all, he did not love the girl, but the image, the dream. His imagination drew him walks with his beloved on the beach, comfort and peace. But what if reality turns out to be different?
There may be another reason for the hero’s indecision: he is afraid not only of rejection, but also of the fact that the imaginary image he has created in his head has nothing to do with reality.
Why risk your fragile and vulnerable heart if you can endlessly revel in dreams and illusions of a happy future together? In dreams everything is so perfect, so fabulous that it is easier to wallow in them with your head, occasionally diving into the real world to admire the beloved as a beautiful picture. Then you can dive back into the abyss of dreams, daydreams and beautiful made-up fairy tale. Meanwhile, the “marvelous vision” of the girl lives peacefully, unaware that a boy in love sighs for her next door.
Who knows, maybe the boy and his beloved would have been together long ago, but the boy, because of his timidity, does not dare even to call out to her and suffers in silence from his love. It is so easy to suffer, for one does not need courage to suffer and to dream. But it takes courage to come up and say all the things that torment the heart and keep you awake at night. And you also need at least a minimum of eloquence to be able to string a few words together. As you can see, the guy in the song has neither. All of this is more than compensated for by his exuberant imagination.
And maybe because of this exuberant fantasy, the guy hesitates to approach the girl. For him, she is an ideal, devoid of flaws. At the same time, the guy, like any man, knows that he has a truckload of flaws. And why would such a perfect girl need a non-ideal guy? Therein lies another mistake of the hero of the song: to get acquainted with a girl, you must first “take her off the pedestal” and realize that she is a regular person with her own pros and cons.
So that’s the conclusion that “Imagination” is a song about how indecisiveness gets in the way of our life. About how sometimes it’s easier to live carefree in the world of your fantasies, than to make the first step and turn your dreams into reality.
A lot of guys nowadays “suffer from the same affliction” as the hero of the song. But maybe you should not suffer in silence, sigh and admire the beloved of a mile away? Maybe we should just walk up and say hello. And then, who knows? Maybe the feeling will be mutual and very strong. And there will be walks on the beach, joint evenings and an endless fairy tale for two, which became a reality.
