so, as part of the pair of novels (Watcher and Reaper FP#3) I'm currently working on, I'm, "Investigating THE OTHER SIDE," whatever form that might take or whatever imagery that might put into your head. Let's put it this way, "Duality, or dual purpose/function, is an essential part of both these novels' narratives." They're not even necessarily 'the same book' seen through narrative filters; they have their own unique story to tell. I've seen this duality exist frequently in people's hands; double headlines, double fate lines, double heart lines, double (or doubled) life lines. A person with two 'personalities', a person juggling two careers, a person split between loyalty and excitement, a person protected by another. Though I've never been able to 'actively contact' this other realm directly e.g. how psychic/mediums do it, I think it's there 'real close' to us all, waiting patiently for our interest in it.
Watcher is about a man finding himself through eight others. Reaper is about averting an ELE or Extinction Level Event after which mankind, as we know it, is no more. I've already addressed such a(n eternal) duality issue in my recent novel Tandem, which wasn't just about a boy-girl team of secret G3 agents working for 'the dark government' i.e. the one we never see but still pay for with our taxes and licensed leisure activities, it was also about DUAL nature (dual existence) in general. At the personal, atomic and galactic levels, everything seems to have a twin. Writer Philip K Dick believed all through his life that his unborn twin sister was with him. I use this concept of twins (conjoined across the dimensions) in Tandem, and I'm exploring it further in Watcher, and to a lesser extent in Reaper.
When I write, it's like I "link in" with the characters of my books and they dictate (often sporadically) where they want to go next, depending on the possible paths I've already set out for them in my head. It's like the writer in me is FEEDING OFF THESE PARALLEL TWIN WORLDS (whatever they are) and using these brief connections to fill my books with content. It's always felt this way, not channeling; nothing specific like that. But could 'being creative' mean 'the ability ro reset one's twin' from time to time? Allowing another person into your own twin slot, another creative being to link with you? Creativity, then, translates as 'a sharing of the two worlds, rather than a fixation upon the one'?
I kinda believe we get a glimpse of this other REAL WORLD when we sleep i.e. when we dream, we're living this other life. We pop into and out of it, like visitors to an attraction. Writers, artists, creatives in general seem to be CONSCIOUS DREAMERS, able to bridge the membrane between the two worlds easier than others. Maybe we're 'defective' in that we (maybe) 'should be shielded' from this other place and not communicate with it in such vivid terms but 'a glitch in our genetic make-up' allows for this SPILL THROUGH. I don't, know, I have NO IDEA what it means to be alive. I'm, what you call, Grasping At Straws. Suffice to say...
Duality seems to be 'the norm' in this universe, rather than the exception - soul/life mates, parallel space/time locations, electron/proton pairings, yin-yang; the very definition of the term co-incidence. Many people are said to have 'body doubles' or look-alikes. Mine, for example, lives quite near me, in Oxford an many people have called me by his name believing him to be me. But how do we make sense of our 'dual lives'? How do we discover what it means to be alive?
