Musings About Muses and Little Red Riding Hood

What awakens your creativity?

I was always that kid watching the world, drawing. Detached.
Is it something we're born with? I think that's part of it, certainly.
Children are awake to their creative nature.
Grown-ups tend to fall asleep.

For me, my muse was fully awakened with the birth of my daughter. I was no longer the observer, I was part of creation.

There were several years when she was a itty bitty that I put down my former tools of creativity. There is something inherently selfish about being an artist. It's a timeless zone that takes offense to the interruptions of earthly demands like a crying child. So in the interest of being a fully present parent, I put those things aside, thinking I would be able to be creative again one day. I didn't realize that my creative being would be entirely transformed through her. I was blessed with a child that would happily spend hours making marks on paper with her mommy. Finger painting, play dough, gluing scraps to paper plates. She delighted in all of it, and so did I! As her creative nature unfolded and grew, so did mine.

Another child came along. I was nervous. How could I love anyone else as much as I already loved Her? What I didn't yet know is that love increases exponentially, never diminishing. And my creative nature feasted! I was no longer just the observer. I was part of creation. I was honored.

Projects became puppet theaters and refrigerator box playhouses. I discovered fabric though my children, making capes, and tents, and tiny capes and tents for stuffed animals friends. And, most importantly, I discovered an unlimited well of inspiration, available by listening.

My children rarely require my constant presence now. There is no more finger painting. But I find that if I listen carefully enough I am treated to songs and poems and glimpses of sketchbooks.

And I have discovered that creativity, like love, increases exponentially.

. . .

Is it any wonder then that I find muses buried in the stories I poured over with my children?
I'm not the first to find a muse in Little Red Riding Hood. There's just something about that girl and her edible grandmother that has captured the imagination of children (and grown-ups) for generations.

The story we now know as Little Red Riding Hood was first published in French in 1697, but had been passed down orally for who knows how long before that. It was included in several English fairy tale collections in the 1700s, such as in A Pretty Book for Children; or in The Top Book of All, for Little Misters and Misses.

So many artists have been inspired by Little Red. Charles Dickens even said that she was his first love.

Here are a few two-dimensional incarnations of Little Red and her anthropomorphic Wolfy nemesis by different artists-

In the original stories, Little Red was always eaten up (let that be a lesson to you, wandering around in the woods talking to wolves)! Then various manly-types rescued her (and sometimes Grandma) for another couple of hundred years. It wasn't until the 1970s that Little Red started outsmarting that bad ole wolf and saving herself and her grandmother without assistance.

I think I like those endings best.