Now We Are Six (Again) - Moominpappa

I am in the midst of an artistic recovery, and going back like an archeologist and excavating the play from my past.  Art turns on play.  Art is play.  Our six year old sometimes mentions the quote from "Sunday in the Park with George," "Work is what you do for others, leibchin; art is what you do for yourself."  I'm not sure it is meant in a positive vein in the play - but it's as true a statement as appears anywhere in the musical.

Which brings me to Pooh.  We love the twenty stories written by A.A.Milne, and read them aloud at special times, like around the fire.  It struck me recently that there is only one artist in the Pooh stories, and it's the bear himself.  He writes poems, he writes songs, he invents games (Poohsticks).  Rabbit and Owl are too concerned with results and appearances to play and make art.  Eyeore is too down-turned to consider playing and creating.  Christopher Robin is the other one who just plays, and in a way he is the inspiration for the grander art that is the Pooh stories themselves.  And isn't it interesting that the most memorable and far reaching art of Milne's entire creative life was a set of stories written for the least serious (but most important) reason of all?  To play with his child?

We have a hard time playing after we grow up.  Somehow we have mistakenly defined growing up as when we get serious and quit playing around.  Most of us stop being freely creative at the same time.  We prevent our creative outflow by talking it down in one way or another.  Even Pooh does this, talking about his poems and songs as "no good."  But he writes them anyway, given even half a chance, and he is always willing to share them with others regardless of what his inner censor might be saying.  We wouldn't have "Cottleston Pie" if he'd held back.

But the resulting artwork is not the important part.  Ideally it would just be the end result of an exploration, an essay, an "attempt" to see or think through an interesting possibility.  Pooh's art is like that - seeing where the humming goes.  If it's enlightening to others to review the course of that journey, then the work might be worth something in it's own right.  But mostly art is about the doing - the activity of painting in order to see, or writing in order to understand, or dancing in order to feel.

A friend of mine tries to live by the motto "Dance like no one is watching."  Feel.  Play.  I'm trying to do that, and the paintings have started again for the first time in over a decade.  More importantly, this time I know what went wrong with all the prior blossomings, and I also have no confusion about what I want to paint.  The latter is really new to me.  I plan to paint like no one's watching.  I plan to shush the voices that criticize the effort (while listening to the voices that point out what would be even more fun to do next time).  And I plan to show the results of the fun to others, and ponder the value of any comments in a playful light.  Like Poohbear.

Got an inner Pooh you need to let loose?  Isn't he (with Christopher Robin) the happiest creature in the woods?  And why is that?  Wouldn't you choose to be the happiest creature?  Do you need some quiet to listen to your honey jars calling you home?  If you listened, what would they tell you?  I've been surprised and not surprised at mine.  Some of the revelations are followed immediately with, "Well, YEAH!  What were ya thinkin?!"  Things from almost 30 years ago suddenly make sense.  Things I've loved RESTLESSLY for all my life suddenly have something to DO in my life.  There's playing to do.  Gotta go.

Moominpappa