On MERMAIDS and INNOCENCE
My workshop with grandchildren Ella 5 and Freya 3 during the week Mo 29 Aug to Fri 2 Sep 2022
Really?
Don’t overdo it! Don’t get angry!
It was not necessary for ME to get involved. ME, being defensive.
I negotiated 1 hr between 9 – 10am on three mornings for a workshop:
MY workshop.
Pony riding, lake visit, outside playground, car transports, eating and sleeping was well organised and thought about by others. The long envisaged week with the grandchildren was certainly well catered for.
No need about my additional “arty” interests.
I suppressed this “need” in me for it really felt NO good for anybody or at least I felt I had no function.
On came the workshop day. I banged a wooden spoon on a pot and with a builders hat introduced myself as a storyteller. The audience of 2 knew already the story of the MERMAID as I then found out – but not the original one written
by Christian Anderson. I made this notion very important and then spoke slowly with a lot of gaps:
The sea king had lost his wife, he was a widower. His mother stepped in but she was in the real world
and didn’t rule the deep sea like her son at the bottom of the sea. He was the king of INNOCENCE in the phantasy world down there.
What do you think about the life down there? Would you like to be part of it?
The grandmother said to the girls if you don’t like it anymore and when you can wait until you are 15,
I promise you a prince, for the VERY best of you!
I quickly found out that what attracted my girls was the joy to perform and to dance. I was stunned by the intelligence of the younger one to instantly pick up on exactly the steps of her sister. I only discovered that after I looked at my photos on the iPhone. So it happened that I invited them to perform and to do that in front of their own stage set. And for that “art” I handed out two square meter sheet of paper from a newsprint roll given to me years ago for free by a printing place. I encouraged them to draw creatures, animals, people, plants and castles of the story I had told them suitable for both worlds, the real and the underworld. I suggested to tear out waves and clouds but to pay attention to the ways paper can be torn.
The different development of the girls became apparent. Ella created elaborate drawings whereas Freya loved to paint a huge blue see and to glue her torn waves with wallpaper paste on top of it…
To be like a child, what does that imply?
Are we naive when wanting to be like a child?
She took the biggest brush and I worried about a colour ordeal. I took her into a shed outside. But what about her clothes ? Was I not prepared enough? That could only happen to me, I heard an inner voice saying.
But lucky, I remembered a bag of T-shirts given to me too big for an event in the past. For now they reached right down to the feet of both children. I suggested to paint zig zag pattern onto the lower parts of these T-shirts to simulate scales of fishes. But really – being confronted with the REAL world myself – predictably … some colour came through to a pink T-shirt and I had to face repercussions from her mother. Lucky I was again. She forgave me.
For their dance performance I put ribbons around their legs. Here again I was in my own world and “over the top”. And then, there was not enough time for a rehearsal, the younger Freya could not imitate her older sister who enjoyed boasting her own brilliance.
The spontaneity in them I had enjoyed at first ended in a quarrel between them.
And also, I was punished because typically for me I had to finish setting up the backdrops myself holding the two worlds together with black Gaffa tape, just for my own benefit to finish the job !
So it comes that I reflect here with you, the reader, on the value of spontaneous creative interactions and if there is a meaning and a function for this in a wider educational and political context nowadays!
Please write or talk to me and tell your own stories when playing and working with children and grandchildren.
I am interested.
And as a stimulus I add a “word” from one of my favourite writer Jan Morris on INNOCENCE.
and and…he only wanted to make her feel small, the Squash-Device.
