When I was a wee lad living in Hawaii, summer was a carefree time. Days meant playing at the beach with my white styrofoam surfboard, biking to Dairy Queen for a chocolate-dipped cone, chasing geckos around the house, and filling sketchbooks with drawings—usually monster stories that ended in dramatic finales of lasers and explosions.
Ah, those wonderfully “lazy” months of June, July, and August. Lazy, of course, was a misnomer. By adult standards, racing Hot Wheels and climbing banyan trees may not have been productive, but it was a season when everything was possible if the mind conceived it.
I remember one afternoon at my friend Gus’s house. He opened the door dressed in a Superman costume. Maybe it was a Halloween preview, maybe not, but either way, I felt a bit out of place in my red-and-blue striped shirt. My mind scrambled. Gus boomed, “I am Superman, faster than a speeding bullet!”
I replied, “Well, I wore my Spider-Man costume.”
The colors matched, but would he buy it? After a skeptical squint, Gus broke into a grin, and off we went—leaping from couches, battling villains, the shag carpet transformed into molten lava.
How simple it was to change the world: a blink, a striped shirt, a bit of imagination, and suddenly the universe was transformed.
I admit, I’m envious of that younger self. Part of the reason I followed an artistic path was, perhaps, a desperate attempt to hang onto that childlike view. Art has given me a way to build entire worlds from whim, thought, and whatever medium is at hand.
Of course, September always arrived with its sobering reality: school. Suddenly, those long adventures were relegated to afternoons and weekends. Each year, the sacred time of play seemed to diminish as adulthood tightened its grip.
The artist’s solution is simple—and difficult. Ritual. A devotion to making. Creativity is easily pushed aside for “more important” things, but for those who value imagination, that’s doom. Even twenty minutes a day—like a daily vitamin—can keep you in tune with your younger self.
Because Spider-Man outfits don’t come from the store—they come from dresser drawer and a good imagination.