A question I frequently get is where do story ideas come from. The short answer is that they come from everywhere. But of course some stories are inspired by what is circulating in your brain. That happened I believe with Thistle.
Prior to walking up the hill to my granddaughters to be introduced to Thistle and his brothers and sisters after they had just been born I had watched online the most watched TED Talk of all time, the talk on how schools kill creativity by Sir Ken Robinson.
The talk has been viewed more than 73 million times.
Near the end, Sir Ken Robinson tells the story of young Gillian Lynne who as an adult choreographed Cats and Phantom of the Opera for which she was awarded Tonys and had over fifty major stage credits as a dancer, director or choreographer. At the age of 87 she was named Dame Commander of the British Empire, DBE.
As a young girl Gillian Lynne was said to be in effect unteachable, to have a learning disorder. Her teacher said she needed to see a doctor. She was taken to a doctor and as related by Sir Ken Robinson the doctor turned a radio on as he and her mother left the room to talk privately.
As they looked through the one way glass they observed Gillian Lynne moving around the room. The doctor proclaimed there was no learning disability at all. “She’s a dancer” he said. She then was enrolled in a dance school where she proclaimed “there were others like me” and the rest is, as they say, history. One of the world’s greatest ballerinas of all time resulted.
The important point made in the TED talk is that creativity is many times suppressed by the educational system by forcing students to be immobile.
This gets us back to Thistle. Thistle doesn’t learn by following in a straight line. He has to follow his curiosity. Learning isn’t just a one way approach. As I saw Thistle the first time off in the corner away from Mama Midnight and his brothers and sisters learning about the world in his own way, satisfying his curiosity, I thought of Gillian Lynne.