In his Biographia Literaria, Coleridge argued that the primary exercise of the imagination is not high-level cognitive events like thoughts, dreams, and fantasies, but basic perceptual activity – how we see, hear, and feel the world. The functioning of our senses, what we notice and care about (or don't) from one second to the next is the supreme embodiment of our imaginations. Leigh's early works – particularly Bleak Moments, Hard Labour, The Kiss of Death, Grown-Ups, and Meantime – confirm Coleridge's observation. They don't just tell interesting stories about unusual figures; they give us new eyes and ears, new powers of perception. They open a new world to view. One might say that only a weak artist thinks the function of art is to leave the ordinary world behind to fly off into a realm of dreams or fantasies. Leigh offers new ways of feeling and seeing the world we live in.

Of course, seeing and feeling freshly are easier said than done. We are born into patterns of feeling and thinking that are hard to get beyond. We encounter experience through such a haze of intellectual clichés and hand-me-down emotions that our perceptions are as conventional as our television shows.