The discussion on language reminds me of the Merleau-Ponty reading I've been doing, and the notion that I think Piaget had that children don't even really create true meaning for things until they have given it or learned its name, and that ties in with the importance of first-order and second-order speech.

What makes imagination original, in my opinion, is not necessarily the technical aspects (like composition and texture and all that), but that art is an interpretation of something ambiguous, and that our individual perceptions of reality vary; it is the combination of the subjectivity and the objectivity that can make it special or at least communicate in a way.

I don't know if this is the direction you were going with the topic, but that's what I got out of it anyways.

I miss you! Will you be in NC for Christmas?