WHIMSY:
…an idea that has no immediately obvious reason to exist
Lots of Bad News Lately. People are doing horribly atrocious things like spending other people’s money (and lying about it) and nobody seems to be going out or shopping. Jobs and houses are lost in this war of greed. There is a dull silence as we persevere to understand and regroup our strategies. Even the Oscar fashions seemed so overtly safe, this fear of the unknown permeating every turn.
The weather in upstate NY has been overcast, snowy and icy. I catch my eyes gently hovering above the mounds of dirt that have been recently revealed by the melting snow. I silently will the crocuses to bloom and shout a burst of color into the air and blow fairy dust into my brain.
I too have been battering down the hatchet. I close the doors against the frost and start a fire. I watch the snow gently falling outside and try to force feed my creativity. This bottomless well was dry until a recent visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to view the Alexander Calder Jewelry Show. The only thing missing at this exhibition was the vibrant sound of hammers clinking and chiming in unison with the forging of copper and silver against hardened steel.
There was a picture of Calder seated at his anvil: teeth clenched, hammer raised, aimed and ready to attack. Piles of metal rod in the background, with the sun shining upon his anvil. He was living in a realm of bliss, his personal heaven. Suddenly I longed for that state of mind, that peaceful oblivion, that release from the monotony of “feeding the machine”. This was my epiphany: where was my joy in my play? Where, along the way, had I pressurized my spontaneity?
Whimsy is where it’s at. Laughter. Playfulness. A snow day from school. A guilty afternoon in a movie theatre. A jumping up and down joy that brings back the hope from reality. Relief from the immediate and the obvious. I feel the need for F-U-N and a little bit of whimsy, something that has no obvious reason to exist.
