‘A magical display of the problem of life in the labyrinth of time.’
After last week’s discovery of Salvador Dalí’s little-known 1969 Alice in Wonderland illustrations, I followed the rabbit hole to another confluence of creative culture titans. In 1945, Dalí and Walt Disney embarked upon a formidable collaboration — to create a six-minute sequence combining animation with live dancers, in the process inventing a new animation technique inspired by Freud’s work of Freud on the unconscious mind and the hidden images with double meaning. The film, titled Destino, tells the tragic love story of Chronos, the personification of time, who falls in love with a mortal woman as the two float across the surrealist landscapes of Dalí’s paintings. The poetic, wordless animation features a score by Mexican composer Armando Dominguez performed by Dora Luz.
As fascinating as the film itself is the juxtaposition of the two creative geniuses behind it, each bringing his own life-lens to the project — Dalí described the film as “A magical display of the problem of life in the labyrinth of time” and Disney called it “A simple story about a young girl in search of true love.”
The project remained a secret and didn’t see light of day until a half-century later when, in 1999, Walt Disney’s nephew Roy E. Disney accidentally stumbled upon it while working on Fantasia 2000, eventually resurrecting the dormant gem. In 2003, it was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film.
(I can’t help but wonder whether Destino inspired Ryan Woodward’s stunning Thought of You.)
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Inside the mind of a musser, or what crude maps of the imagination have to do with the seven of diamonds.
Last week, in a comment on BBC’s fantastic The Beauty of Maps program, reader reminded me of a wonderful short film I remember seeing a couple of years ago, peeling the curtain on obsessive map-maker Jerry Gretzinger‘s never-ending project. (The reader, it turns out, was Jerry himself.) It’s about art and storytelling and imagination, and all those things we’ve come to cherish as the highest gifts of creativity. It’s precisely the kind of evergreen goodness that the web’s penchant for newsiness tends to bury and waste, and curators should seek to preserve and resurface. Hence, Jerry’s Map, a living treasure:
It’s alive, it changes. My hand puts the paint on the paper, and then I step back and say, ‘Wow, look at that!,’ as though I was not the perpetrator. I… I’m just the observer.”
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Befriending the Grim Reaper, or what Swiss sunshine has to do with the ultimate personal freedom.
In 2008, having just turned 62, beloved fantasy author Sir Terry Pratchett was diagnosed with a rare form of early onset Alzheimer’s. Three years later, he began the process to take his own life. Terry Pratchett: Choosing To Die is a powerful and fascinating film, in which Pratchett explores the cultural controversies and private paradoxes surrounding the issue of assisted suicide, which remains illegal in most countries. From the “small but imbalancing inconveniences” of the disease’s earlier stages to the loss of his ability to type to witnessing a terminally ill man peacefully choreograph his own last breath in Switzerland, Pratchett explores what it would be like to be helped to die, and what it would mean for a society to make assisted death a safe refuge for the dying.
What you’re about to watch, may not be easy, but I believe it’s important… Is it possible for someone like me, or like you, to arrange for themselves the death that they want?” ~ Terry Pratchett
When I am no longer able to write my books, I am not sure that I will want to go on living. I want to enjoy life for as long as I can squeeze the juice out of it — and then, I’d like to die. But I don’t quite know how, and I’m not quite sure when.”
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Brain Pickings has a free weekly newsletter and people say it's cool. It comes out on Sundays and offers the week's best articles. Here's an example. Like? Sign up.
After last week’s discovery of Salvador Dalí’s little-known 1969 Alice in Wonderland illustrations, I followed the rabbit hole to another confluence of creative culture titans. In 1945, Dalí and Walt Disney embarked upon a formidable collaboration — to create a six-minute sequence combining animation with live dancers, in the process inventing a new animation technique inspired by Freud’s work of Freud on the unconscious mind and the hidden images with double meaning. The film, titled Destino, tells the tragic love story of Chronos, the personification of time, who falls in love with a mortal woman as the two float across the surrealist landscapes of Dalí’s paintings. The poetic, wordless animation features a score by Mexican composer Armando Dominguez performed by Dora Luz.
Brain Pickings has a free weekly newsletter and people say it’s cool. It comes out on Sundays and offers the week’s best articles. Here’s an example. Like? Sign up.
Last week, in a comment on BBC’s fantastic 
In 2008, having just turned 62, beloved fantasy author 
