Panda’s make "L" Poops

We know we’re not supposed to say it first. It’s the unwritten rule… well actually it’s not exactly unwritten. It’s unavoidably everywhere. It’s in every glossy magazine. In every desperately shameful self-help book. It pops up in every wine-drenched best friend conversation. It’s screamed at you from every “honey-take-it-from-me” love pariah. God, they’ve made countless movies about it. Don’t. Say. It. First. But what if I did?



This panda made a L dropping. A four letter word that flows from the mouth like liquid gold. Love.

 I remember when I was little I watched Aladdin and The King Of Thieves. A beautifully sentimental follow up from the classic, where Aladdin finds his forgotten father. They go on an adventure in search of a magic hand that turns everything into pure glittering gold. I remember the scene where Aladdin dropped it into the ocean and it turned the water into a swirling gleam of magnificence. However, the magic hand fell into the wrong hands and when kissed, it turned its beholder into a forever frozen form of unbreakable golden rock. It was beautiful yes. The most beautiful gleaming statue you ever did see. But all life was sucked from it. The beholder became bound within its beauty, trapped and immobile.


See where I am going with this? Probably not. Ok. The word Love is liquid gold, beauty in its purest gleaming form. It makes even the wrong look right. However, the minute it touches the lips, it’s as if everything inside freezes from fear. It feels like time stands eternally still, and the seconds once it has escaped seem to last a Nicholas Flamel lifetime.


I had spent a magic weekend with my best friend, recently turned, boyfriend. To an observers mind it probably wasn’t magic at all. The perfect 48 hours consisted of all-night laughs, cold-nose kisses and post-relationship-spread pizzas. With a full belly and full sighs, I pranced out of the car to say goodbye and it went like this: “bye baby, I loveeeaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh fuck.” Romantic isn’t it. I stood there, static for eternity, then instinct kicked in and I chose flight mode.


So yes. I dropped the L-bomb first. For a while I mulled things over and wondered if I had meant it, and after a weeks’ worth of harping obsession, I think I have decided that yes. Yes I did mean it. It flowed so naturally that how could I not have. At first I was mortified, scolding myself for betraying my better judgement, but then I realized it wasn’t my own better judgement I was betraying. It was everyone else’s. Ok so maybe if so many people are telling you not to say “I Love You” first, maybe, just maybe they’re onto something and I should listen. But then again, I feel like I’m on to something good too so I can’t discount that.


If I had to ask my seven-year-old self about my current situation... my seven-year-old self who watched Aladdin and The King of Thieves… I would be intrigued to hear what that Tammy may say. I bet she’d squeal so loud and jump up in delight, knocking her bowl of Nik Naks flying. Because as much as seven-year-old Tammy was little and knew nothing, when I look back, she knew everything that was important. She knew that “I Love You” was not meant to be pushed under the bed with all the other monsters. It’s not that thing at the deep-end of the pool. It’s not even nearly as scary as what happens in the dark of the night. Love is just too damn pretty to run away from. To seven-year-old Tammy, Love is what a new puppy felt like. It’s a summer afternoon spent climbing trees. It’s Disney.

So where to from here? Well nothing. If I have gained anything, it’s just that I know it’s ok to make Love Poops. Moving forward? Well of course I’m Tamsin now, no longer Tammy. I’ll wait it out for the next best moment when I can’t contain the liquid gold anymore. It’s bound to happen soon. The next problem? Will he Love Poop back?

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Creative Block: An Endangered Imagination

I stumbled across some wonderfully amateur drawings from my childhood this past weekend, and I envy the conceptual capabilities of my 5 year old self. Fish could fly above the ocean surface. You could dance on the back of an elephant. You could run on a rainbow. I look at my curbed mind now and wonder how my imagination managed to flee from me.


Even though we go through life being told we need to step out the box and embrace the conceptual, I fear that we find ourselves more and more restricted. A grown-up’s creative “out the box” brief means “go wild, but make sure it’s the clients description of wild.” It means “think of the most ingenious idea possible, but we might have to cut some things that just aren’t in our budget.” It’s “Say something that will blow others’ minds, but you can only say it in 140 characters.” And if in the odd event you ever do get a limitless brief, you are stuck trolling the internet for inspiration and get deflated when you wish you could have thought of it first.


We find ideas in self-interpreted, non-sensical song lyrics, through others’ smart ideas on blogs, through stumbled photos on Flickr, through humorously relatable gifs. I am beginning to wonder if we didn’t have the magnitude of inspiration right at our typing fingertips, if we would even be able to abstractly visualize again. I long for the moment where a big idea springs solely from the corners of my very own mind, without stemming from a googled influence. Not a spark off someone else’s great train of thought. The more I see, the more I forget. The more I observe other’s experiences, the less time I have to gain my own experience. The more inspiration that floods through the crooks of my mind, the less limitless wonder I seem to be able to pull from it.


I want to be able to paint a picture for sheer thrill -a simple image ingrained in my imagination that has plagued me to come out. I don’t want to have to justify it with “grown-up” conceptual analysis. In some way, the steps I take forward open my mind to the unimaginable, but the sad thing then is that the unimaginable becomes what? Imaginable! It becomes “been-there-done-that”. It becomes “got-the-t-shirt”, “made-the-t-shirt” and “came-up-with-the-concept-for-the-t-shirt. “


I’m unsure how to settle the persistent niggling of creative frustration. I’m not sure if it stems from self-doubt or disillusion with the concept of growing up. However, to me, I find my imagination quite endangered. Or to put it simply, a bitter creative block has hit.