{"id":345,"date":"2012-05-10T21:17:28","date_gmt":"2012-05-11T01:17:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/50.87.217.193\/blog\/creative-nudge-goodbye-maurice"},"modified":"2015-03-07T00:12:13","modified_gmt":"2015-03-07T00:12:13","slug":"creative-nudge-goodbye-maurice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.equilter.com\/blog\/creative-nudge-goodbye-maurice\/","title":{"rendered":"Creative Nudge – Goodbye Maurice"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Sam5A_550\"<\/a>
<\/span><\/p>\n

Yesterday I heard that author\/illustrator Maurice Sendak<\/a> was gone, and it sent me into a wave of nostalgia for when my boys were little<\/a>, and loved to read "Where the Wild Things Are<\/a>."<\/p>\n

Our oldest son, who is now 22 and a senior in college<\/a>, was the original owner of this classic tale of wild monsters and little boy fantasies<\/a>. He got so excited reading the book that he drew all over the pages and even ripped out a few. Later when he was older, he said "Yeah, I remember that. I thought that's what you were supposed to do when you read that book: roar, gnash your teeth and wildly consume the book."<\/p>\n

Well duh, how did I miss that? Of course he was right. I taped the pages back together and read the book to Sam 7 years later. As far as Sam knew, that's the way the book was supposed to look…. wild and deconstructed and reconstructed<\/a>. At the time it was mauled I was not happy – thinking of the cost of replacing the book – but then I realised that it was now a piece of family history. <\/p>\n

So this is a picture of Sam, our middle child, at age 5 which was about the time we were reading the taped-up version of Where the Wild Things Are<\/a>. This was his response to the book. Make a costume and pretend to fight Wild Things. <\/p>\n

At what point do we stop making costumes, stop pretending to fight (or dance) with monsters, and when do we stop imagining ourselves as the hero of our own story?<\/a> I think there is a hero in every child, and a child in every adult<\/a>, just waiting to dress up and act out the fantasy<\/a>. How many adults dress up as Klingons, wear kilts<\/a> to weddings, join Civil War re-enactments, dress up for Renaissance Faires<\/a>, wear special outfits for special athletic activities<\/a>, put on old clothes for a "vintage" style photo<\/a>, and the list goes on…<\/p>\n

Just like Max, we want to put on our wolf costume<\/a> and sail across the ocean<\/a> where we can be the wildest one of all. Maurice was a genius, because he tapped into not just a child's fantasy, but that place we all want to go when the world is just a little too oppressive and dark. Whether it is a long session in our studio, a cabin in the woods<\/a>, a long hike to a mountaintop<\/a>, a marathon run<\/a>, a wild scrap quilt, or twirling crazily under a starry sky<\/a>…we want to have a space of time to be wild and free and out of control.<\/p>\n

Good-bye Maurice. We'll miss you.<\/p>\n

Let the Wild Rumpus Start!<\/a><\/span><\/p>\nShare Post:<\/strong>
\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"pinterest\"<\/a>\"linkedin\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday I heard that author\/illustrator Maurice Sendak was gone, and it sent me into a wave of nostalgia for when my boys were little, and loved to read "Where the Wild Things Are." Our oldest son, who is now 22 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-creativity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.equilter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.equilter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.equilter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.equilter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.equilter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=345"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.equilter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1476,"href":"https:\/\/www.equilter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345\/revisions\/1476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.equilter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.equilter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.equilter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}