I went through some old boxes last year in the lead up to moving house. It was mostly a lot of old school work from my childhood. As tends to happen, I ended up finding some interesting things.
Like this slightly alarming drawing I did as a child.
Alarming not because of the person with the deformed balloon-animal body hiding behind the extremely thicc tree. Or whatever it is that’s being pushed out of the chimney. None of these details warrant a call from the teacher. Put it down to creative expression, with maybe a note to keep an eye on things. The thing that caught my eye was the scribbly black hole in the centre of the drawing, which if you've seen enough horror movies, especially from the nineties and noughties, is something to be concerned about.
It's a common trope, perhaps you remember it: a parent discovers that their child has been furiously scribbling scary black shapes on a piece of paper. The parent, shocked, then inquires as to why they had been doing this, to which the child calmly replies with something like: oh I'm just drawing that demon thing/scary person/terrifying black hole of nothingness that I always see. Why are you so upset? Also, what's for lunch?
For me, the most famous movie that comes to mind where this occurs is The Ring, where a child named Aidan goes on a scribbling frenzy, drawing endless black rings on paper, foreshadowing the terrifying shit to come later in the movie. Namely a number of scenes where people are watching a TV, and suddenly a ring appears and a girl wearing a white dress and black hair covering her face, crawls out of the ring on the TV screen and kills them.
Here are the grabs from the movie. Notice any similarities?
I watched a lot of VHS tapes back in my youth but none that involve a girl with hair covering her face crawling out of the TV. And if I did, then somehow I survived and I plan to let the trauma of that experience stay buried.
It's not just kids that draw scribbly black shapes in movies. Years ago I watched a movie called The Mothman Prophecies where a detective is investigating a case and discovers some drawings his deceased wife had done of a terrifying moth-like creature, which leads the detective to consider it might be all be linked and have something do with the local 'Mothman' legend. Which sounds like a Marvel superhero, but is very much not one.
In situations like this, I often wonder where they get their drawing supplies from. Did they happen to have a plentiful supply of black pencils and sketch paper handy when one of these feverish drawing sessions came on? Or - whilst still in some sort of trance - did they rush down to the local art store to pick up some stuff.
'Hi, I'm having some extremely dark thoughts and premonitions about a demon? What would you recommend?'
'Charcoal might be good for that'.
This trope more commonly involves kids because it's scarier, but also because as an adult, there are generally other ways to process stuff. Journalling for example.
Anyway, I found lots of other things too.
Like this letter from my primary school principal from when I was around seven, informing parents that we'd been learning story mapping, in order to help us understand plot and story structure. I have no memory of this, but perhaps it buried its way into my brain.
Despite learning about stories in primary school, I don’t remember getting to write any in high school. I wish we had. Instead we wrote essays, which made writing feel tedious and boring. Less a celebration of words, and more a construction of paragraphs. I've since found that I enjoy writing, and luckily I don't have anyone grading my work now. Based on all the English assignments I found with 'Cs' on them, I shudder to think what mark this piece would have got.
Of the school work I found, I mostly ended up keeping the stuff from when I was a little kid. It was more fun and joyful. A paper mache vase does tend to be more interesting than a long form essay on Wuthering Heights. Mostly though the work from high school just felt very serious and uninspired. Lots of theory and having to explain yourself. Much more practical and less making things because you wanted to, which is what kids tend to do.
'Why is there shit coming out of the chimney?'
'It's a commentary on climate change'
'Brilliant. A+'
'Actually not really. I just did it because it felt right'.
It's not just school. I'm sure it's also partly to do with becoming more self aware when you're older. More aware of failing and feeling self-conscious. When I look at my old work from my high school days, it tended to be over-thought and wracked with self-doubt. Doing things for the wrong reasons.
It makes me think of that Picasso quote. The one where he talks about it taking a lifetime to return to drawing like a child again. I think it's connected to this idea of tapping into that freeing childlike form of expression. Kid's don't worry as much about what other people think.
I should say I'm speaking mostly about creative work here. Also, I don’t know what education is like these days. Perhaps it's changed a lot.
The most common complaint I remember hearing about high school was the one that goes: when am I ever going to use this? A phrase very often directed at something like algebra. People love to use this example.
I think one way they could have satisfied these complaints would have been to create a separate 'real world', or 'street smarts' option for each discipline. So for example, alongside regular History you could also offer Street History, where instead of learning about Ancient Rome and the Industrial Revolution, students could learn about which of their distant family members have been to jail before and whether the local fish and chip shop that burnt down was a dodgy insurance job.
A Street Geography class would have definitely come in handy. Instead of learning about river systems and low pressure versus high pressure, what would have been more useful was learning about when an 'easterly' was coming in. And what a 'westerly' meant. Based on the adults around me, I'd always assumed that once I'd reached a certain age I would become both proficient at and eager to comment on which types of winds were coming in, or when we might expect the next type of wind. I figured at around the age of 40 it might happen. That would be the point at which I might suddenly become very interested in what the weather was doing, transitioning from casual small talk to a key subject worthy of lengthy and frequent conversations. Neither of these things have happened though, so a Street Geography class could have really come in handy in fostering that.
People slip very easily into weather talk. Much more so than something like mental health. This got me thinking about whether we'll ever get to the point where mental health gets discussed in the same casual manner as weather does.
'How you goin’, Gary?'
'Not too bad, mate. A low mood has come through though unfortunately but I'm hoping the dark clouds will pass late this afternoon paving the way for some breezy optimism going into the evening'.
'Sorry to hear that, mate. It can be very unpredictable, mental health. Also, do you think that's the easterly coming in?'
Anyway, I also found this.
It appears to be the cover of the memoir I was planning on writing at age five. I must have had some great content considering the cover was done, which meant I'd probably already lined up an agent and been given an advance already, because of the apparently rich and full life I'd lived up until that point.
There's also this thing.
It's a corn (obviously) that I made in primary school as part of a project where we had to make a vegetable.
Apparently I phoned it in, making the decision not to worry about adding any kernel detail because people would know it's a corn (obviously). Anyone who’s made a corn before however would know this is a crucial error, as the key to a textile corn looking like a textile corn and not whatever it is I made, is the kernel detail. Originally I had considered using the word 'plush' in my description, but I think that's far too generous an adjective for what is essentially a hard, fabric log. It's a wonder I wasn't fast-tracked into some sort of advanced art program.
The things you find going through old boxes. It’s a real process.
What I’ve found is that sometimes as you go through it all, certain things make sense in hindsight and you can follow an arc or connect the dots. And then sometimes you find out that you made a dense, sagging corn log and that turns out to be the most concerning thing you made as a child despite finding a scribbly black ring drawn onto a piece of paper, next to a house with shit coming out the chimney. And then you think that nothing makes sense and maybe having to explain yourself a bit more as an adult occasionally isn't all bad. And also, what was the point of algebra?
Sorry, I got distracted. That tends to happen when you get pulled down a rabbit hole scribbly black hole.
Perhaps the past is best left undisturbed.
I had immediately assumed that it was an old tyre but I prefer the notion that it is a portal to an elsewhere.
Man. That corn log. Hilarious.