Tag Archives: literary inspiraton

My Travel

Disneyland Paris as an Adult, Day 2

I discover that I’m hearing Disney film music buzzing in my ears even when none is playing nearby, or even screams from the more extreme rides in the park.

We make good use of our early access tickets and tick a few more stops at Park Disneyland before proceeding to Walt Disney Studios. We journey along with Pinocchio until he becomes a real boy, with the presence of BABIES reassuring me that this is not a secret breakneck speed type rollercoaster, and we make it out of Snow White’s forest alive – considering most of Disney’s animated features are aimed at children, they sure contain some scary stuff (which I said to avoid using another word). Another mark of the enduring power of these creations if you can still acknowledge that as an adult.

The Pixar short film festival plays throughout the day at the Discoveryland Theater also in Park Disneyland – a very recommendable stop. 4D glasses add to the excitement, as well as some convincing effects. For the Birds was my favourite, points out of ten for moral elements and humour, plus of course anyone who has ever been bullied or felt like they needed to defend their individuality will identify with the story. And something else – this cartoon reminds us that karma sees everything.

At Walt Disney Studios we sit down in another theater and lose ourselves in a multilingual montage of Disney’s animated classics (with particular emphasis on those with French origins or set in France). I am, quite simply and humbly, reminded of what makes Disney Disney. As my sibling points out, we haven’t seen Mufasa die on the big screen since 1994, and I’m just as banged up about it as ever. Scenes of Bambi crying for his mother do not help.

Riding some (almost) magic carpets on an Aladdin-themed carousel afterwards brings a pleasant surprise, I can look down and around me, see it all, “…shining, shimmering, splendid.”

Yes, I was just singing that at the top of my voice. If not here, then where else?

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When at Home

Painting Words on Your Wall

Now, I hate painting, based on the one and only time I did it after shamelessly procrastinating. But if I were to do it, this could tempt me.

Author Meredith McCardle painted the first page of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone on her wall in three weeks. There is something about the sheer purity and the simultaneous richness of words on a white page that is accessible as an art object, especially if it’s words from a beloved book that still makes your skin tingle.

Speaking as a fellow Harry Potter fan, great choice of wall coverage! Glancing over at my own shelves, I confess I would take a page out of the same book (pun!) My own choice would possibly be the passage describing Harry finally casting his first, real Patronus in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban: “And then it hit him – he understood. He hadn’t seen his father – he had seen himself –

Harry flung himself  out from behind the bush and pulled out his wand.

“EXPECTO PATRONUM!” he yelled.

And out of the end of his wand burst, not a shapeless cloud of mist, but a blinding, dazzling, silver animal.”

The memories make me tear up. Another choice would be Jane Austen’s immortal Pride and Prejudice, which I feel I can open at any page. Actually, I just opened it at Mr. Collins’ proposal to Lizzy – no, not for my wall. How about this: “They walked on, without knowing in what direction. There was too much to be thought, and felt, and said, for attention to any other objects.”

Ray Bradbury’s special prose from The Halloween Tree is also a good idea for some word painting: “And Ghost and Mummy and Skeleton and Witch and all the rest were back at their own homes, on their own porches, and each turned to look at the town and remember this special night they would never in all their lives ever forget and they looked across the town at one another’s porches but especially on and over across the ravine to that great House where at the very top Mr. Moundshroud stood on his spike-railinged roof.”

I’m so lucky that the works I’ve quoted here so far also have great film adaptations to underline their brilliance. How about playing an audiobook or the movie in the background as you paint?

I am very tempted. Very.

 

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