Am I the last to discover Mo Willems and his wonderful books for children? Three years after the start of the pandemic, the New York Times published a short piece about by the artist and the videos he made to help himself through it. So, three years after the start of the pandemic, why I am writing about this now? Because I sat down and binge watched them all with a big smile on my face (and ordered a few new drawing journals). Because Mo Willems, author of Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus and eight other Pigeon books, treats kids like thoughtful human beings. And because I also believe that science has gotten us to this point, but art is in it with us for the long term. I'm letting the artist speak for himself here, because he is so much more eloquent than I am. Enjoy his videos; if this one makes you smile, there's a whole series to watch. Now, go get your Sharpies and doodle along!
BY MO WILLEMS, from the New York Times April 9, 2023: I think like many people in early March 2020, I couldn’t or wouldn’t comprehend the magnitude of an actual pandemic, so I didn’t. I’d been traveling to Los Angeles, then I flew to D.C. for a big show where lots of kids would come and doodle while a jazz band improvised. But when I landed, I saw what was on the airport TV screens. That’s when it hit me: We can’t do this. So I canceled the show and flew home.
I’d long been saying that I write about things that confuse me or scare me because if I’m confused or scared enough, I assume that it must be a universal emotion. On that plane, I knew I was afraid. So I thought, maybe other people were afraid, too. That gave me an idea. That was on Thursday, March 12. On Friday I called the Kennedy Center, where I was artist in residence, and pitched the idea of shooting a midday doodling session from my home studio. On Saturday, I wrote a few beat sheets, and my wife, Cher, and son, Trix, set up what we needed. On Sunday, we shot the first Lunch Doodle with a cellphone on a tripod on a table — that was it. No lights. No microphone. We did it in one shot with no edits, then sent the video to the team at the Kennedy Center, who formatted it and announced on social media the video would drop on Monday at noon.
As the week progressed, a pal got in touch to say, “You know what, let me send you a microphone.” My mother-in-law reached out to say, “Let me send you a comb.” The shows got tighter. It was, to be honest, stressful and isolating at the beginning. But within a couple of days, we started getting letters and drawings sent by kids. That felt good.
The whole project gave our family agency, which is what we desperately needed in those early days. Thanks to the kids, our sense of being untethered in a stormy sea gave way to a sense of being connected to a community, which grew into a realization: Science was going to get us out of this pandemic. But art was going to get us through it.
Comments