This morning I woke up, and wondered how many people think, "Another day, so many problems to solve, and a world to fix."
I doubt children wake up that way.
It's play!
It's mystery to explore and the unknown to throw yourselves at.
When I go walking, I pretend everything isn't quite so serious and solid, I sit down and play with a pile of raw umber and burnt sienna rocks. While arranging them into a star, I stay to watch a black beetle navigating the same ledge as my sculpture.
At the playground, young tykes were playing soccer, and the goalie squeals, "A unicorn got caught in the net!" Other kids came scurrying over.
I wondered too if the Japanese and Chinese are right, and there are three soul centers, then perhaps the mind center is masculine, the belly feminine, and the heart center is the offspring: the innocent wonder of a child.
A week ago I was surfing Kickstarter (after I saw that $1M funding for the iPod Nano watch kit). Lo and behold futzing around on "Brooklyn" category I come across a whimsical, unscripted, improv film project featuring kids and their random mysterious objects that they are find along the way, called Spirit Ship.
"As scientific research has shown, the time young children spend participating in open-ended imaginative play has a direct effect on their brain development. Complex extended make-believe play is characterized by invented (both fantastical and seemingly very real) scenarios and characters, often takes place while children are outside of their classrooms and homes... [C]hildren are becoming lost in a series of hoops adults have laid out for them to jump through." - Spirit Ship: a mysterious short film narrated by children, Kickstarter project backing proposal
Spirit Ship video below:
In "scratching my own itch," I'm working on creating an imaginative, inquisitive overlay to the game of life, rather than defaulting to the typical interpretive overlay. I am so feeling that make-believe and what-if is the spirit of the whole thing (I'm not 100% sure how it'll manifest...it's a Mystery).
Just play as we go along. Purposefully deliriously silly if need be. Look at it as MYSTERY!! Rather than.... this is the way things have always been, and it is very very serious and heavy. Oh well.
The consummate explorer: a child.
Your internal artist: your creative child.
Just imagine whatever you want to and say it is so: There is a unicorn in your soccer net.
"You know, it's a truism that writers for children must still be children themselves, deep down, must still feel childish feelings, and a child's surprise at the world. "- A.S. Byatt, The Children's Book via Little Augury blog
Bonus: Excerpt from Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way including "This is why artists may feel shame at admitting their dreams."
art credits: "I wonder if you're crunchy" card by PaPaYa!; Spirit Ship video by Kristin B. Eno
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