This week's 1st task was a creative writing response to a childhood memory that shows a love for art. Struggling for ideas, I went to my kitchen where my mum has collected our childhood artistic creations. I found one that looked interesting, and that I distinctly remembered making in year 4. It seemed perfect, but for that it harbored a dark secret...
A squadron of pens are arranged before me. A blank sheet of paper lies beneath my curled soft fingers, and a small smile plays at my lips, as I consider the possibilities that I can wring out of just these simple tools. While basic to me, they are the epitome of my joy, and the symbol of my creativity. I begin to draw. It’s Diwali soon and my school has chosen to celebrate by inviting parents in for an India inspired lunch in our freshly decorated classrooms. It’s year 4, things are simple. The task laid before me was simple, but oh so very important. I must create an invitation for my parents. I muster up all of my limited and adolescent understanding of artistic tradition and style, and out pours a simple masterpiece. Ecstatic, I hand it to them that very night, and feel emboldened as they shower me with praise and gratefulness.
I was so naive. This simple card has been adhered to my kitchen cabinet for 9 years, and I never thought to take it off to look closer. My memories have betrayed me, for what I believed to be a simple praise of childhood aptitude for the arts, may have instead been the longest and oldest running joke ever played in my lifetime, and I had no idea that it was me who first orchestrated it. For the phallic shapes arranged in rank around the borders of the card, hidden for years by my own trust, tell a very different story to the one I remember.
But for all of the embarrassment, that experience as a child formed a set of early memories concerning art which has led to my love for it to this very day. Even if now they are partially tainted by certain intromittent organs when the page is turned...
