Finding Neverland
Bill Long 1/15/05
The Ambiguity of Childhood
This is not a review of the recently-released film by Director Marc Forster. Movie reviews are now easily accessible online, and are written by people whose prose flows smoothly as they deftly put the film in the context of the Director's work, the play on which it was based, London 1903/04 (when Barrie's Peter Pan was first staged), and the careers of various actors/actresses. Go there if you want a traditional review.
My interest is in taking a line or thought from the film and developing it. In this instance I was struck by the idea suffusing the movie that creativity and childhood are intextricably linked. According to the film, the key to discovering your space of generativity is in allowing the imaginative child in you to take over. Then you begin to soar, in heart and in actuality. Bruno Bettelheim, author of The Uses of Enchantment, could not have been more delighted.
Childhood is one of our last unexamined idealized times. Fueling this idealization are the words of Jesus. For example, most people have heard and many people have preached on his to the disciples (KJV),
"Suffer the little children to come to me and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of heaven. Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein (Mk. 10:14-15)."
In Jesus' thought, innocence or true faith or eagerness is linked to childhood. Hence the child becomes the touchstone or the measure of creativity (Forster/Barrie) or implicit trust (Jesus).
Another Take on Childhood
Childhood may be that for some people, but I find that it is more accurate to say, with respect to people's childhood, that the sense of helplessness, exploitation and inability to control one's situation is the stronger memory. For example, in the movie Kinsey, about the noted sexologist Dr. Albert Kinsey, one of the most poignant scenes is Kinsey's "sex interview" with his rigid, carping, angry father. After denying that he ever had masturbatory thoughts or inclinations in youth, the father wanly admitted that he was forced to wear the male equivalent of a chastity belt from age 10, probably because his parents had discovered him "pleasuring himself."
The stark reality of childhood disempowerment leads to problems in adulthood, as the "grown child" has to face issues of trust, victimization, deep grief and an ability to develop a positive sense of self for life's course. These times of loss of control are fairly easy to spot and extract from people through conversation, though it takes some time to do so. Yet, the times when creativity is first discovered or nurtured are often not during the time of childhood. Usually it is a teacher in high school, an inspiring professor or coach, or an experience of seeing the world on "Junior Year abroad" that fires the imagination. In more than one instance I have asked my law students what has motivated them to go into law, and they normally point to things they have seen or experienced not in childhood but as they are coming of age in their teens or early twenties.
Young Adult Creativity
If I look back to the time when I felt my creativity was first demonstrated it would be in high school and early college days. I don't know what fueled it, and I don't think I recognized what it was while it was happening to me. All I know is that I began to write essays, that I showed to no one (and I do not now have) about race relations, personal freedom and the United States Supreme Court when I was about 16 or 17. Maybe it was because Early Warren had just retired from being Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court and I saw some retrospectives of his tenure in that position. I don't know. But I just began to write.
Then, at age 19, in my sophomore year of college at Brown University, I began to memorize. I memorized the Bible, committing large chunks to my inner consciousness. I recall the fire of those days. I would walk around campus with the 1971 equivalent of my "discman"--myself reciting the words to myself, and I was in my own world. These two things, writing essays and memorizing, on topics of law and religion, were things that I just did because I felt inclined to do them. They flowed out of my longings at the time, to clarify and master.
Discovering the Adolescence
At age 51 I began memorizing anew. I began writing essays again. In the intervening 30+ years I did a lot of good things--picked up a load of degrees, taught, lawyered, pastored, wrote for a newspaper, wrote about 9 books, got married and raised a family, got divorced and hurt real badly, and many other things. But I didn't write the essays, and I didn't memorize. I didn't do these things because they really were not encouraged or even approved. Oh, it would be OK to write essays, if you were a columnist (which I wasn't), but just to write essays or just to memorize, well, what is the value of that?
It was only upon rediscovering those two things as a mature man that I have begun to love myself and my past in such good ways. There is so much I would like to learn from and tell the 19 year-old Bill as he put every ounce into memorizing or essay-writing. I really admire him as I write this today for doing so. I feel more than anything that as I do my work each day, I am being faithful to that young guy as he did his work.
My freedom and creativity emerged from my late adolescence. That is the Bill I want to rediscover and get to know. Childhood was OK, don't get me wrong. But there is too much "noise" in memories of deep childhood to want to see that as a time of creativity and freedom. It is another time for me. And for you?
Copyright © 2004-2007 William R. Long |