Joanna McMeikan - Thoughts


6/20/04 - Princesses in the Post Office and other thoughts... Sorry it has taken me so long to post something new up here but, you know, so much to do, so little time... and never enough merlot to go around. Plus I've been putting a band together to play my music live around Los Angeles. We started rehearsing a few weeks ago, and everything's sounding good so far. Please keep this site bookmarked and check the "news" section regularly since we should have some gigs coming up soon... and I'd love to see you there! The catalyst for my random thoughts today was something that happened in the post office earlier this week. I was in a long line waiting to mail some parcels. A few spots ahead of me, also waiting, was a young, blond mother with her floppy-haired four-year-old boy. He was zooming around, as little kids do, pretending to be a plane or a dinosaur or some such thing, pulling gift boxes out of their slots and putting them on the floor, then grinning mischeviously when mom told him to put them back... pretending he didn't hear her... the usual kid stuff. When their turn came, the mother sat the boy on the counter so she could see him while she was writing her labels. From that vantage point, the boy caught sight of the postal worker at the far end of the room - an older man, with long, white hair and a white beard, a large belly and a big smile. The boy's jaw dropped. After a few moments of silent staring he could contain himself no longer. He picked up one of his mother's mailing tubes, waved it above his head grinning madly and yelled across the room in his loudest voice "Santa! Santa! Look! I'm the Princess! I'm the Princess!" Santa waved happily, and the boy's mother smiled - but she softly chided him "You know, Billy, that isn't really Santa - and you really shouldn't tell people you're the princess... you should tell them you're the prince, because the prince is a boy." Billy's face instantly fell from utter joy to the most dismal and sad of crestfallen scowls. Santa was suddenly just another boring grown-up, and clearly the prince was not a figure of interest in any way. Behind his little eyes you could really see the cogs turning, wondering why wanting to be the princess was somehow not okay, and not understanding... but registering it as a social lesson nonetheless. Obviously this started me thinking about gender roles, about how much of our male and female makeup is really nature and how much is conditioning... but more importantly, it got me thinking about the nature of creativity. We are all born with it (I defy you to show me a healthy child who doesn't want to play make-believe). If you think back hard enough you can probably even remember some of your own youthful play fantasies. We are all witches and wizards, princes and princesses, polar explorers, sailors and cowboys when we are young. We make ships out of cardboard boxes, tea parties out of empty plastic cups, and weird and wonderful things out of lego and clay, crayons and mud and anything else that comes to hand... But somewhere along the line, we lose that imagination, that spark, that uninhibited ability to become something other or to create something unthought-of. It is systematically drilled out of us by well-meaning parents who want us to be equipped to survive in polite society; by teachers who expect us to be neat and tidy and brown and black and grey; by our own fear of not being accepted; and by row upon row of somber men in hats and suits who murmur knowingly and agree, nodding definitively and brooking no argument, that that sort of thing really won't do. The salad fork always goes on the outside, one doesn't wear white before labor day, and most importantly of all, one tries to be as much like everyone else as one possibly can. What a tragic loss this is! In children's play, there is so much natural delight and uninhibited free association - and surely these are the beginnings of the creative spirit? And I think the creative spirit has enormous value, not just in the arts, but in every aspect of life -- in the ability to create a personality and an identity unfettered by the expectations of others; in the ability to create interesting and uniquely fulfilling relationships without feeling pressured to follow some kind of preordained pattern or expectation. And yet we stifle it! And it seems that we do so out of embarrassment, out of some kind of puritannical, Victorian discomfort. We don't want to see someone emotionally naked. We don't want to see their personal fictions and thoughts exposed. We don't like too much freedom, too much free association, too many ideas. We prefer the safety, the predictable "normality", of cages and boxes and labels; of suits and handshakes and glazed, vanilla-frosted, meaningless conversations. And it's sad. In limiting each child's flight of fancy, we give up, tiny piece by tiny piece, so much of the marrow, the essence, the dynamite of who we are, exchanging it for the conjoined rows of inoffensively beige cardboard cutouts that most of us turn out to be. In the moment of his fantasy, Billy abandoned himself utterly to his princess/Santa story, waving his poster-mailer scepter for all he was worth - like Olivier as Hamlet - or perhaps Liz Taylor as Cleopatra. His ability and desire to begin and share the fiction was immediate and instinctive. He had no embarrassment. The few people who never lose that ability turn out, in my experience, to be extraordinary personalities, who live unusually rich and fulfilling lives. I can only hope that Billy hangs on to his cardboard scepter, makes his mother watch "Miracle on 34th Street" and tells her that it's okay for him to be the princess sometimes... and turns out to be one of them. ****************************************** Random List: Favorite food right now: Frozen natural fruit bars from Whole Foods. Worst recent movie (DVD): A tie between "Something's Gotta Give" & "50 First Dates". Stinkers both. I am listening to: Alanis Morissette "So-Called Chaos", U2 "Achtung Baby" Favorite thing today: "Peanuts" playing cards and my friend Toby's new website cutelittleblokes.com Least favorite thing today: Seasonal allergies and L.A. traffic **************************************** MORE POINTLESS RAMBLINGS TO COME SOON! **************************************** E MAIL ME IF YOU HAVE ANY COMMENTS! joanna@joannamcmeikan.com Write to Joanna with your thoughts, questions, opinions, suggestions.**

6/20/04 - Princesses in the Post Office and other thoughts...

Sorry it has taken me so long to post something new up here but, you know, so much to do, so little time... and never enough merlot to go around. Plus I've been putting a band together to play my music live around Los Angeles. We started rehearsing a few weeks ago, and everything's sounding good so far. Please keep this site bookmarked and check the "news" section regularly since we should have some gigs coming up soon... and I'd love to see you there!

The catalyst for my random thoughts today was something that happened in the post office earlier this week. I was in a long line waiting to mail some parcels. A few spots ahead of me, also waiting, was a young, blond mother with her floppy-haired four-year-old boy. He was zooming around, as little kids do, pretending to be a plane or a dinosaur or some such thing, pulling gift boxes out of their slots and putting them on the floor, then grinning mischeviously when mom told him to put them back... pretending he didn't hear her... the usual kid stuff.

When their turn came, the mother sat the boy on the counter so she could see him while she was writing her labels. From that vantage point, the boy caught sight of the postal worker at the far end of the room - an older man, with long, white hair and a white beard, a large belly and a big smile. The boy's jaw dropped. After a few moments of silent staring he could contain himself no longer. He picked up one of his mother's mailing tubes, waved it above his head grinning madly and yelled across the room in his loudest voice "Santa! Santa! Look! I'm the Princess! I'm the Princess!"

Santa waved happily, and the boy's mother smiled - but she softly chided him "You know, Billy, that isn't really Santa - and you really shouldn't tell people you're the princess... you should tell them you're the prince, because the prince is a boy." Billy's face instantly fell from utter joy to the most dismal and sad of crestfallen scowls. Santa was suddenly just another boring grown-up, and clearly the prince was not a figure of interest in any way. Behind his little eyes you could really see the cogs turning, wondering why wanting to be the princess was somehow not okay, and not understanding... but registering it as a social lesson nonetheless.

Obviously this started me thinking about gender roles, about how much of our male and female makeup is really nature and how much is conditioning... but more importantly, it got me thinking about the nature of creativity. We are all born with it (I defy you to show me a healthy child who doesn't want to play make-believe). If you think back hard enough you can probably even remember some of your own youthful play fantasies. We are all witches and wizards, princes and princesses, polar explorers, sailors and cowboys when we are young. We make ships out of cardboard boxes, tea parties out of empty plastic cups, and weird and wonderful things out of lego and clay, crayons and mud and anything else that comes to hand...

But somewhere along the line, we lose that imagination, that spark, that uninhibited ability to become something other or to create something unthought-of. It is systematically drilled out of us by well-meaning parents who want us to be equipped to survive in polite society; by teachers who expect us to be neat and tidy and brown and black and grey; by our own fear of not being accepted; and by row upon row of somber men in hats and suits who murmur knowingly and agree, nodding definitively and brooking no argument, that that sort of thing really won't do. The salad fork always goes on the outside, one doesn't wear white before labor day, and most importantly of all, one tries to be as much like everyone else as one possibly can.

What a tragic loss this is! In children's play, there is so much natural delight and uninhibited free association - and surely these are the beginnings of the creative spirit? And I think the creative spirit has enormous value, not just in the arts, but in every aspect of life -- in the ability to create a personality and an identity unfettered by the expectations of others; in the ability to create interesting and uniquely fulfilling relationships without feeling pressured to follow some kind of preordained pattern or expectation.

And yet we stifle it! And it seems that we do so out of embarrassment, out of some kind of puritannical, Victorian discomfort. We don't want to see someone emotionally naked. We don't want to see their personal fictions and thoughts exposed. We don't like too much freedom, too much free association, too many ideas. We prefer the safety, the predictable "normality", of cages and boxes and labels; of suits and handshakes and glazed, vanilla-frosted, meaningless conversations.

And it's sad. In limiting each child's flight of fancy, we give up, tiny piece by tiny piece, so much of the marrow, the essence, the dynamite of who we are, exchanging it for the conjoined rows of inoffensively beige cardboard cutouts that most of us turn out to be.

In the moment of his fantasy, Billy abandoned himself utterly to his princess/Santa story, waving his poster-mailer scepter for all he was worth - like Olivier as Hamlet - or perhaps Liz Taylor as Cleopatra. His ability and desire to begin and share the fiction was immediate and instinctive. He had no embarrassment.

The few people who never lose that ability turn out, in my experience, to be extraordinary personalities, who live unusually rich and fulfilling lives. I can only hope that Billy hangs on to his cardboard scepter, makes his mother watch "Miracle on 34th Street" and tells her that it's okay for him to be the princess sometimes... and turns out to be one of them.

********************************************

Random List:

Favorite food right now: Frozen natural fruit bars from Whole Foods.

Worst recent movie (DVD): A tie between "Something's Gotta Give" & "50 First Dates". Stinkers both.

I am listening to: Alanis Morissette "So-Called Chaos", U2 "Achtung Baby"

Favorite thing today: "Peanuts" playing cards and my friend Toby's new website cutelittleblokes.com

Least favorite thing today: Seasonal allergies and L.A. traffic

********************************************

MORE POINTLESS RAMBLINGS TO COME SOON!

********************************************

E MAIL ME IF YOU HAVE ANY COMMENTS!

joanna@joannamcmeikan.com
Write to Joanna with your thoughts, questions, opinions, suggestions.