Why it would be cool to be able to draw

I can't. I really can't draw, and I realize that what passes for animation on this blog is kind of like those flip pictures we used to make on note pads (sometimes only using two images). But I am still fascinated with making things move. It is all an illusion. If I see a series of still pictures, it just screams at me, make a gif! And the mind is so gullible, it will move from still picture to still picture, and fill in whole seconds in the middle.

I have always been fascinated by these things - "pencil tests" they're called, where I guess the animation is roughed out. You can see through all the characters, which fascinates me. It has an air of shifting, swarming unreality (just like my life). The smudgy grey-and-black is dreamlike, a nightmare in fact. This is a deleted scene, a nasty one, and it's a good job the kiddies weren't subjected to it. 

I have mixed feelings about Disney, the whole megalomonarchy. Of course I was saturated in it as a kid. There was no escaping it. Disney is like eating a whole cake at the same time, or going on a swell carnival ride that leaves you feeling a little sick afterwards. There's a much-too-muchness about it. It's too good, somehow, or just a little fake, and then you feel bad that you were so taken in. I could never abide that falsetto-ish, diaper-wearing little snot with the round ears that always face to the front. Since when is vermin cute and appealing and something you want to welcome into your household? I was more of a Warner Brothers kid, with all those bizarre, smart-alecky characters like Foghorn Leghorn and Yosemite Sam. 

Good Christ! This is incredibly violent! Dwarfs punching each other's lights out. I thought those seven little men got along just great, though what their role in Snow White's life was, I never figured out.

At various points in my life, I've tried to draw something or paint or do SOMETHING artistic, because I just long to. I can't, because what I turn out is so mediocre it's laughable. I once painted a face of Jesus that set me back about six years. I thought I was a great artist then, which tells you something about my mental state. I kept sending scans of my paintings to people, then wondering why they didn't say anything. I truly thought a major new talent was blooming out of nothing.

I thought a lot of other things, but fortunately they didn't come true either. 

Here Yosemite Sam appears to be romancing Granny, who must have come in to some money or something. You can see what looks like fragments of dialogue actually written above his head. He is standing in the middle of nothing, not even blank but dirty brown. At one point he disappears except for his face. Fascinating. Maybe I really live inside an unfinished cartoon, but just haven't realized it yet.

I have watched people sketch who really know how to do it, and it confounds me. I watched a bit out of a movie where Terry Gilliam was sketching storyboards for his aborted Don Quixote movie. I just couldn't believe how he knew to do that, to make an image that was coherent and even vital and alive with one or two simple, even primitive strokes. Like an ear for music, I guess you have to just have it.

DIRECTOR'S CUT. That horrible Snow White scene in slow-mo. Note that various dwarfs appear and disappear as they annihilate each other.

Slow-motion Sam. Downright creepy, especially the way Granny vanishes when she is no longer needed. The one-frame colorization, or whatever you call it, is startling. 

Genetic mysteries

I came from what is sometimes called a "musical family". We weren't exactly the von Trapps, but my father was choir leader of our church (putting on such ambitious productions as Handel's Messiah), and both parents were deeply involved in Gilbert and Sullivan light operas. My father played violin decently, though I don't think he ever left first position. My mother was so indoctrinated with musical expectation that she often expressed shame that she did not know how to play the piano. It somehow would have made everything so much better.

So when WE came along, of course, it was the same thing, except that the pressure was far worse. The expectation wasn't just competence or even excellence, but a world-class career. Joy had nothing to do with it. I'd say we had a moderate amount of talent. My sister had a warm mezzo voice which might have taken her to a career if she hadn't early-on wrecked her life. My brother Arthur was a talented flautist and guitarist, and also a schizophrenic, who ended up panhandling on the streets of Toronto (not to mention prostituting himself) before he died in a fire.

My brother Walt was the only one to actually apply his talent, teaching and playing oboe in an orchestra in the Okanagan. Not exactly the big time, and he had to supplement his income with being an accountant on the side (work he claimed to prefer). His two daughters ended up as professional string players, an interesting development (their mother being an orchestral musician).

Then there was me, so bad at the piano that my teacher came to my mother and said, "This child is unteachable". Since no one else in the family would touch the violin, I was "it" and was just dismal at it. It was only much later that I discovered or uncovered a voice that had been totally buried by my sister's histrionics. I was afraid to open my mouth before that.

(Strangely enough, at age 40, I had the mad desire to take another crack at the violin, and I did. I found a magnificent teacher and played for nine years, including a lot of public performing. What does this mean? I am not sure, but I wanted to take the instrument back and approach it on my own terms.) 


My kids came along early in my life, and not only did they show no signs of musical talent in any area, they were completely disdainful of it. I remember they called Pavarotti "Pavarotten". They excelled in sports - were champions, in fact, which baffled and surprised and delighted Bill and I. We were both hopeless klutzes and literally dropped the ball.

But then. . .

A lo-o-o-ng time later came my grandkids, and I sensed musicality in all of them right from the start. They have sung in choirs, played instruments in bands, and, most of all, danced - every kind of dance from ballet to jazz to tap to hip-hop, a discipline which demands being one with all types of music. All three grandgirls have excelled at it. Two of them are off in Vernon winning trophies at a competition even as we speak. (One grandgirl has no hearing on one side, demanding extreme listening skills and a focus that simply amazes me.)

And look at Ryan, adorable, his instrument a foot longer than he is! He caught his hand in the slide one day, an excruciating thing that demanded a trip to Emergency, but he went right back at it as soon as he was healed.

So what am I getting at? I was amazed at my kids and their ability to master any sport, the trophies crowding the bookshelves in their rooms. If any part of it was genetic, it must have been several generations back. But the music thing was there - at least on one side. Did it leap over the barrier, or is this just serendipity? I don't know, but it's gratifying to see .

And of course, it just hit me that dance requires athleticism as well as musical knowledge. The alchemy of genetics never ceases to amaze me.