More tweeted stories by Devi McCallion / @dei_genetrix

11:03 I believed there was another world that would show itself to me in the smallest ways. I would hold myself as still as possible and make my eyes like toys eyes that don't move --and I would wait. I would wait for the things in the room to forget about me and begin to move.

11:05 My mood seemed to have a lot to do with it. I'd have to make myself very calm and very friendly. The way I would when I wanted a shy animal to come to me. I knew I had to be patient and willing to wait a long time.

11:49 At the center of everything we call 'the arts' and children call 'play', is something which seems somehow alive. It's not alive in the way you and I are alive, but it's not dead. It's alive in the way our memory is alive. Alive in the way the ocean is, able to transport us.

11:50 Alive in a way that thinking is not, but experiencing is, made of both memory and imagination, this is the thing we mean by 'an image'.

12:31 Playing by ourselves is not playing alone. There is something brought alive during this play. When played with it seems to play back. No one stopped me from playing when I was alone, but there were times when I wasn't able to, though I wanted to- Times when nothing played back.

12:31 Writers call it "writers block". For kids there are other names for that feeling, though kids don't usually know them.

12:35 Fairytales and myths often are about this very thing. They begin sometimes with this very situation: A dead kingdom. Its residents all turned to stone. It's a good way to say it, that something alive is gone.

12:35 Television eased the problem by presenting channels to an ever-lively world I could watch, though it couldn't watch me back. Not that it would see much if it could. A girl made of stone facing a flickering light. 45 years later a woman made of stone doing the same thing.

12:38 In a myth or a fairytale one doesn't restore the kingdom by passivity, nor can it be done by force. It can't be done by logic or thought. So how can it be done? Monsters and dangerous tasks seem to be part of it. Courage and terror and failure... or what seems like failure...

12:38 And then hopelessness, and the approach of death convincingly. The happy ending is hardly important, though we may be glad that it's there. The real joy is knowing that if you felt the trouble in the story, that your kingdom isn't dead.

13:00 I tried so hard. I drew and erased with a sick feeling. There was no hidden talent. It looked horrible. I tore it up and felt scared. I carried my fear alone until another fear replaced it. What had I done that was so wrong? Nothing, really. Nothing that bad in the outside.

13:00 But on the inside, in the story-world I'd tried on the glass slipper and broke it. And it was my mom's glass slipper. And she got it from the Gorgon. I didn't draw for a long time after that. And no one noticed. And I was glad.

13:03 By 5th grade I knew who the best artists were in our class. The best writers. Out of 30 about 10 stood out and were good at something. The rest of us started wishing. I wish I could draw. I wish I could write. I wish I could sing. I wish I could play music. I wish I was funny.

13:03 By 5th grade most of us knew it was already too late.

13:09 What is singing? Why is there singing? Is it just entertainment? Human beings everywhere sing to babies but they hardly recognize that babies are also singing right back. Singing comes before talking. What do u imagine being able to sing would feel like? What are u singing about?

13:11 If we spoke about these things instead of singing about them, what would be different about the experience?

13:15 By 6th grade I stopped doing ordinary things in front of people. It had been ordinary to sing, kids are singing all the time when they are little, but then something happens. It's not that I stopped singing. I still sang. I just made sure I was alone when I did it.

13:15 I made sure I never did it accidentally. That thing we call "bursting into song". I'm so stupid 🎶 I'm an idiot 🎵 <<<"EVERYONE CAN HEAR YOU, YOU KNOW?" (I'm so stupid... I'm an idiot..._)

13:17 I quit my hula dancing lessons. People always laugh when I tell them I took hula very seriously as a child. But I did. I went to lessons twice a week for six years.

13:19 The lessons were taught at a community center near my house. I could walk to it. Our teacher taught traditional hula, an old style of dancing that had nothing to do with entertainment. I danced to ancient hawaiian chants and songs every tuesday and thursday after class.

13:24 If your kingdom has gone dark inside, if you are lost, if you have dropped your map and compass, if you are only 12 years old, and there is a light which flickers and speaks in a way that makes you forget these things-- You will go to it.

13:24 You will go to it willingly and turn to stone. What else can you do.

13:29 As a teen I started drawing again once I found out I could copy other peoples art and I was actually pretty decent at it. And I'm thankful for this because I was completely unable to draw anything on my own that I could stand. I especially liked to copy comics.

13:33 I kept copying pictures, and looking for more and more pictures to copy which got me going to the downtown library. I would print out pictures of pokemon on the library computer. You only got 15 minutes for your turn. It was 25 cents per page. But there was a lot of pokemon.

13:37 A few blocks west was the beginning of a long street of porno shops and bars. There was also a headshop. In the headshop were bootleg neil young albums and underground comics. If the mean hippie was working he would say "Adults only. You can read. Look at the sign. Goodbye man."

13:38 If some of the other younger people were at the counter I could go in. My future was something I was looking for. I went down that street looking for it. I went into that headshop looking for it. Scared but doing it anyways. I bought underground comics with my babysitting money.

13:45 I was liking the word "underground" for the headshop comic books. My mom would've lost her mind if she knew what they were. By then she wasn't looking my way much anymore. She never asked what I was reading. She never asked about my drawing either although I was drawing more&more

13:47 And I was writing a lot and reading a lot because these 3 things and music made steady moods I could rely on to get through the last years of living at home. I wanted a different life but I wasn't sure how to get it.

13:50 I wanted to escape. I was copying other people's lives and personalities, hair and clothes, table-manners , conversation-style, way of laughing, way of anything that was part of the future I wanted to be in. My drawings got sweeter, and stiffer.

13:50 I copied poems and song lyrics. I copied thoughts of others and tried to change my situation by copying myself into another world. And it worked. In a fairytale it wouldn't work, but in real life it did.

13:58 I escaped and a few years later I met my teacher, the one who showed me how to work in a way that slowly changed everything. She barely spoke. It drove me crazy I wanted to know what she thought of my art. There wasn't a lot going on in my art but something was starting to happen

13:58 She taught a wa of writing she learned from Ira Progoff. It was a way of keeping a journal that made parts of my life come back so vividly I didn't top to think things out before I wrote them. In fact stopping to think about it stopped the experience.

13:58 It seems that thinking and experiencing are not the same thing.

14:04 The Saturday night fire at my elementary school. Portable 5 burns down. There is a bad smell for weeks. Old Mrs. Pattons house burns down. She's carried out screaming. The Black Cat lumber yard burns down. Someone is setting fires.

14:04 On the nights of the fires I ran outside in a mumuu and my grandmas shoes. I thought I looked very cute. Everyone came out of their houses to watch. It was the only time our neighborhood ever did anything together. I saw the new kid in his pjs smoking. My mom thought it was him.

14:04 It was not. His mom just let him smoke.

14:06 13:58 It seems that thinking and experiencing are not the same thing. It's the difference between trying to remember and the sudden flood of memory that comes from a song or a smell or a certain slant of the light. Wait, did the school burn down before the lumber yard? Which is better? Which seems more believable?

14:06 Every time I smell burnt lumber that has gotten wet I come back to this night. I am there again completely.

14:52 Q: What is the worst thing we can do while trying to remember something? What is the worst thing we can do when we are trying to forget something? A: Try. Trying to remember and trying to forget don't seem to work. I wonder why...

14:54 Sometimes in order to remember we have to completely forget. Sometimes in order to forget we have to completely remember.

15:07 If you opened an old can of pork and beans and found a genie inside who said "Boy! Is it great to finally be out of that can!! Thank you! In exchange I would like to release you from your can!" Would that image make sense to you? Would you say "I'm in a can?"

15:07 If a genie offered to free you from a dull canned life, what would you say? "Can you make me rich?" --No. "Famous?" --No. "Really cute?" -No. "Well can I at least make a living from it" --Probably not. "Then what's the point?"

15:07 Would the feeling of aliveness be enough? A feeling of life being something worth living? "The point is... IN the can... or OUT of the can" Would you ask for time to think about it? 5 years: 10 years: 20: 30: I've got it! 💀⚱️: Out of the Can!