Sailing through Disneyland

When I started researching The Stowaway, I became aware of tall ships everywhere. It's been fun to see how much sailing lore still exists in modern culture (as well as annoying to note the inaccuracies in everything from TV shows to video games--oh my, video games).  I recently spent a couple of days in Disneyland, which unsurprisingly turns to be a splendid place for ship-spotting.

Peter Pan's flight was the obvious first stop. There's something rather marvelous about "sailing" over London and Neverland in a tiny ship.

Donald Duck's home is a little ship too, the Miss Daisy, moored in Toon Lake in Mickey's Toontown.

My companion and I were impressed with the full-sized, three-masted replica of the sailing ship Columbia, which turns out to have a link to my research for The Stowaway (as do so many things). In 1790, the Columbia was the first American ship to circumnavigate the globe, accompanied by Washington state's own Lady Washington on the first part of the voyage. Captain Robert Gray was the first recorded European to enter the mouth of the Columbia River, which takes its name from the ship.

Columbia has been a Disneyland attraction since 1958. It runs on a gas engine along a track, but does have rigging and sails, though they're rarely unfurled. It now plays the role of the Black Pearl in the Fantasmic! evening show, but for twenty-four years before that played the part of Captain Hook's Jolly Roger. I am, of course, sorry to have missed that.

Belowdecks in Disneyland's version is a galley and officers' quarters, added in 1964, all looking quite accurate to me. The twelve-minute ride around Tom Sawyer's Island doesn't provide quite enough time to examine every detail, at least if you also want to see the "shipwreck" on the island.

The Storybook Land canal boats take riders past Prince Eric's castle and ship from The Little Mermaid,

and also a tiny Kensington Gardens complete with golden Peter Pan statue.

Night falls with a glimpse of a pirate flag beyond the trees.

Here's one last ship from my favorite window on Main Street:

a diorama that rotates from the interior of the Darling children's house to their flight with Peter Pan over London.

I almost missed that transition. It's worth taking a second look at everything at Disneyland, probably, if you get the chance.

Weird words: A diversion

While it may seem that everything I do--certainly everything I write--is related to Captain Hook and Peter Pan, occasionally I do compose something else. When I write "weird poetry," it tends to appear in a publication called Spectral Realms.

Cover art: “Cave Dwellers” by Mutartis Boswell

I have two poems in the most recent issue (Winter 2018/No. 8), but I think this entire issue is particularly good. In addition to original poetry, each issue has a couple of classic reprints along with reviews and an article or two. If you like traditional verse or weird poetry (much more in addition to the Lovecraft-inspired), there is much here to enjoy.

This one is a terza rima, the form used in Dante's Inferno and Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind." It may also be tangentially related to Peter Pan in that the subject is a ghost ship, but let's overlook that. I love the title font.

Here's where I nearly got in over my head.As you can see, it's a ballad, but I decided for some reason to create my own rhyme scheme. I ended up with more rhymes than strong words for the rest of the line, and had to decide which rhymes to keep, and then rework the lines I liked to contain them. The whole process took several months of coming back to it, throwing up my hands in despair, and stalking away only to return to it later. But this one was important to me to finish, and do right, and I'm happy with what was finally printed in Spectral Realms.

I have a sestina in mind for my next submission--a companion piece to my "Keeper of the Innsmouth Light" from Issue 2. Since that was printed in Winter 2015 (still available on the website!), it's probably time I get this one done. Sestinas are not easy--there's a reason I haven't written one since 2015--but after "The Ballad of 3 A.M.," writing it will probably be a relief.

Should I rework an old vampire poem as well? I just might.

Peter Pan and Andrew Wyeth

I discovered this unlikely connection at Winter is Always, the recent Andrew Wyeth retrospective at Seattle Art Museum. As I've observed before, I find reflections of J. M. Barrie's famous character in  many unexpected places.

"Christina's World" is certainly Andrew Wyeth's most famous painting (although it was not at the SAM exhibit--it lives at MOMA in New York and does not travel). The history of the land around him--his home in Chadd's Ford, Pennsylvania, and a summer home in Maine--permeates all of Wyeth's work, and that leads us forthwith to his connection with fictional pirates.

Captain Keitt by Howard Pyle (1907)

I've written before in this blog about Howard Pyle, the illustrator who brought the image of the quintessential swashbuckling pirate to the modern world.

One of Pyle's students in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, was N. C. (Newell Convers) Wyeth, Andrew's father. N. C. Wyeth illustrated 112 books during his lifetime, including a 1911 edition of Treasure Island which is considered a masterpiece.

"Trodden Weed," 1951

Wyeth painted this self-portrait of sorts, Trodden Weed, with a piratical pair of boots previously owned by Howard Pyle.

Painter's Folly (1989). The house went up for sale in 2014 and
was ultimately bought by the township of Chadd's Ford in 2017.
Note the mermaids!

Andrew Wyeth considered Pyle his "spiritual grandfather," said Joyce Hill Stoner, the art conservator who worked for the Wyeths for thirty years. Pyle's house, Painter's Folly was the subject of several of Wyeth's paintings, as were Helen and George Sipala, the couple who lived in the house during his lifetime.

Andrew Wyeth (1917-2009) was often in poor health as a child and was home-tutored. He had a difficult relationship with his demanding father, who died when his car stalled on railroad tracks when Andrew was 28. He considered his father's death to be a formative emotional event--much as J. M. Barrie was affected by his brother's death. After this, Wyeth turned from watercolors to egg tempera (i think Captain Hook would approve of this old-fashioned technique), which gives his work a stark and timeless quality.

Perhaps it is odd that I was so alert to connections to Peter Pan, but note the hook appendage in this portrait of Wyeth's neighbor Bill Hoper, a blacksmith and handyman. The docent who discussed the exhibit at SAM said that Wyeth's father wouldn't have approved of so much reality in a portrait--not an issue for Andrew.

Although he was one of the foremost American artists of the twentieth century, his style of work became unfashionable during his lifetime, considered too sentimental by those who preferred their art abstract. I admit I was drawn to seeing this exhibit because a friend of mine described it as bleak, and I hoped I would find some comfort in that given my own mindset after the death of my father last September. What I found in Andrew Wyeth's paintings was imagery that is almost surreal, realism that expands into symbol and emotion, a depth beneath what has been dismissed as cartoonish or antiquated. This is what I hope in some small way to bring to my portrayal of Captain James Hook: something close to the heart, or maybe the bone.

“Life is strange,” Wyeth once told [Edgar Allen Beem]. “From the outside, things may look one way, but when you look inside, they’re very different.”

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Note for further reading: I came across A Piece of the World, a fictionalized memoir of Christina Olson of "Christina's World," not long after seeing the Winter is Always exhibit. Naturally, it is now on my reading list.