whimsy, magic and fairytales
on embracing emotion and finding my inner child...
To begin with, I cannot precisely trace why we are here. It could be that I was making papier-mâché when the thought came in, my TikTok feed, which constantly feeds me ideas to keep crafting, or my new obsession with culture and the magical lives and stories behind so many.
I have been reading The Artist’s Way for a year now. At first, all I did was read; I never actually did the activities involved. Now, I am doing the activities. I feel like writing this; declaring this in public might jinx my progress and interest in continuing the rest of the book, but we will see what happens.
One topic that keeps on coming up in the book is the concept of listening to your inner child. My inner child, however, could not be found. I listened. I stayed silent. I crashed out a lot. I couldn’t find her. I did, however, come to two conclusions: she might be dead, to the point of no revival, or she is lazy. Sometimes, I hear her, and I write her ideas down. She whispers in my ears, and oh, what a great artist she is. Sometimes, she goes silent for weeks, and I beg her to give me crumbs or anything that I could do for my artist date. It got so bad, I wrote a poem, on the whim, apologizing to her. (We do not speak on this.) She is an interesting character, however, so I wasn’t going to give up on her.
I decided to meet her at the point of her need, where she started. What she liked, whose work she liked, and what she grew up with. Especially what was beautiful to her. The memory lane shit was hard; a good bunch of my memory is gone due to one of the most sickening events that I refuse to remember, but she was interested in the most beautiful things-in whimsy, emotion, fairytale, and drama.
She likes flowers and butterflies and how pretty they are. She loves Enid Blyton books. She was interested in art class because of the stuff she made with her hands and not the painting and drawing stuff. Paper mache, origami, pressed flowers. She loves illustrated books only and will never read anything else. She prefers soup to carbs and suggests that in whatever you cook, the soup must outweigh the fiber. She loves fairytales. The kind about mushrooms, fairies, witches, gnomes, and fairy queens. She wouldn’t watch witch movies or fairy movies; she was too scared of all that.
All in all, she took me back to who I was. Bitch, I believed in magic. I believed in fairytales. I believed I would be a princess.
She showed how much emotion I had cut out of myself. How thick I built walls, out of the fear of being cringy or being too soft.
I’ve realized how much emotion must be embraced and how much whimsy one can allow oneself to have. There is never too much glitter. It is never bullshit to want to have a solo picnic in a huge flower garden. It is okay if your mind is a child’s playground. It does not hurt to open yourself to doing things that you once loved, but not for the sake of impressing but of expressing.
We live in a world where our emotions are constantly measured and gauged. You do too much if you’re too emotional. You must be nonchalant. You can’t have interests or hobbies, and even if you do, you might be better off not sharing that with anyone. You cannot feel too much; you cannot dress too much; it’s all casual, and it’s dead.
There’s no story anymore. Life has lost its inspiration. It does not have the same feeling anymore. The world where edge and character were based on emotion and high-flying interest is now a world of nonchalant girls and boys, revolving their lives in TikTok just for a sort of validation amongst other people, people who are just as emotionally dead as they are.
There is power in whimsy. There is power in standalone interests. Thierry Mugler, one of the greatest fashion designers, was inspired by superheroes and fairytales. Today, his archives stand as one of the top sources for inspiring other fashion designers and even musicians. Cardi B, alone, has pulled and pulled from his archives and stunned in every single piece. It all started with a man who embraced whimsy.
I usually say that there is a difference between someone who calls themselves a creative and someone who calls themselves an artist, and the difference is emotion. The original inspiration for that train of thought comes from Rue Yi on TikTok. An artist is bold enough to let their emotion influence their work. There is a lack of fear of being cringey, there is a lack of fear of embarrassing themselves; and even if it is embarrassing, there is always space for growth. It never stops growing.
We should allow ourselves to feel more. Pick flowers for yourself; don’t wait to be gifted a nasty bouquet when he could have picked out flowers with meaning, explaining why he picked them and that they reminded him of you, and even write you a poem along with it. Pick seashells by the beach. Be whimsical. Read children’s books. Allow your mind to wander to the farthest ends of the earth and push the possibilities of what could be real. Not for you to gain, but for you to find the voice that is yourself. The same voice that could influence every single part of your physical self, be it personality, physical appearance, philosophical thought, and even spirituality.
Be more honest with yourself. Be open to the idea of giving out love. Write notes to people. Speak to flowers. Write postcards to your friends. Be real. It doesn’t help if you stick yourself in a box and try looking out for what isn’t missing. The real you starts in your cage. Be real.
I really enjoyed this, it has a beautiful message and I can relate it to it a lot. Keep going!