Dear Ezra,
Expectations are the source of much unhappiness. We start out perfect because we are wholly ourselves. When your life began, you were fully Ezra. Your first attempts at art — drawing perfect geometric shapes — were uniquely yours. Then the expectation became that you should learn how to draw things as they are.
Your teachers instructed, “Now you have to draw a thing exactly as it is.” You could no longer make a geometric shape, symmetrical and exact, the way your brain saw it. You were told to draw a person, a tree, a house. When we make a new thing and feel the pulse of the impetuous to make something, that’s a creative project. When we reproduce what already exists, wouldn’t that seem to be the opposite?
Creativity is about making new art, not following a blueprint. When art is original, it is alive and full of music and dance and love.
Iteration doesn’t have to be a dead end. You can refine an abstract shape. Make it more pure. Make it more you. Make it more complete. Make it more new. But when money gets involved in art, the demand often becomes to repeat the same shape that makes the most money. The art gets focus-tested out of the process.
Not all learned behaviors reduce who we are, but prescriptive demands to make money often do. Drawing a house, a tree, or a person is rarely creative if that’s not what we want to draw. We can make it so, but it is not inherently so. Making a direct repetition of a thing isn’t inherently bad, either —unless it’s made without any trace of new creation, retracing what already exists because people like that it existed and would buy it again.
That’s Moana 2. The first movie was a complete work — it featured heartfelt songs, vibrant animation, cultural richness, and a unique new Disney character, who was not a Princess. The second movie is a mere repetition: an empty, corporate product. No memorable songs, no worthwhile arcs, nothing original.
Ezra, you’ve shown me what it means to create. You are wholly original. Even when you draw the same thing, you make it new every time. That is the job of the artist.
When it comes to art, I wish the world had no influence on you at all. This comes out of some parental concept that I could somehow protect your innocence, preserve what is pure about the geometric shapes you want to draw. I’ve learned from you that it’s okay to make some concessions and that you can still make it new. When you draw a basic thing, you still add new and specific details every time. You will never draw the same thing twice. That’s why you are an artist.
Animation studios used to understand being artists. Their movies were made by animators who told stories from the depths of their visual imaginations. Now, they keep making the same thing after they make a good thing once. A total waste of perfectly good ideas. And now they’re going to make a live-action Moana, too… isn’t it evident they have no idea that originality is the point and why the first movie is well-loved?
Movies could learn a lot from the art of children. They could learn how to make art that is new and unrestrained, like Disney used to do. Never forget what it means to create and you will always make something new, something creative, something wholly original and alive.
You liked the movie. Of course, that’s okay! You liked the movie because you do not have expectations for what it needs to be, either. You’re willing to just engage with what’s there: a silly, increasingly episodic retracing of a movie you like a lot. And you have no expectation that this has to be a bad thing. We can all learn as much from your lack of judgement as we could your art.
Love,
Dad