I invent from the gut. I cannot imitate. I cannot invent something that didn’t come from within. I let the subconscious doodle, or the fingers type, and then I analyze what makes those subconscious, creative impulses okay and logical. I bring them to the conscious level— sometimes by a lot of force, but not always. Maybe one hemisphere has a hard time hearing the other? Sometimes it happens by steps, sometimes in one step. I think maybe I got better at this over the years. Sometimes it takes years to make one step.
This is the method that I used to create all of Planet Heart’s ideas, writings, and drawings. I insist on using this method.
I refuse to artificially doodle 5 characters according to a standard formula, then slap 5 personality types according to typical criteria for comedic effect, and then write cliché lines.
In the process of designing Planet Heart, all of its elements came to me in this fashion, drop by drop. In 1996, I described in my journal the water drops that represent ideas—coming together all at once when the right water drop combines several. For this reason, no idea is ever tossed or considered irrelevant.
I often wonder how Planet Heart was formed. I ask myself the question, but I don’t force the answer. I’ve had the image of the Heart Galaxy as a combination of heart flowers made of hearts, floating towards each other to make bigger and bigger hearts… since about 1997. Before that, in 1996, I had a story in my mind of how the hearts, in heart combinations, came together and apart… it was a love story between the HeartSun and … I barely remember. Maybe it never made sense fully, but it might have. Some day I’ll find all the old writings.
I was on the elliptical machine at the gym when the missing “water drop” just naturally formed. It took 14 years for this part of the story to come out:
A man and a woman who promised to be together and make a family together got married. They were very loving and respectful and sweet. More than anything, they were very generous towards each other. Without an equally generous heart, no relationship can last. Or if it does, one side will be bitter, or one side will be victimized. And no hearts will be produced. Luckily, this couple knew in their core that they will only survive individually if they help the other stay healthy and happy and strong. They repeated this mantra in their hearts. Each night when they slept together, sparks of love few out of their bed and into the night’s sky. The sparks were in the shape of hearts. They rose higher into the atmosphere. As the years went by, the little hearts made an entire galaxy of hearts. Eventually, some of these hearts merged into the heartflower shaped stars, moons, planets, and heartsun.
I’ll have to find my old notes to find the stories of the heartsun and the other heartstars and their relationships to one another. Or maybe I’ll just invent new stories. I am sure they will still fit in with the old.
Planet HeartMark was created many years later. Planet HeartMark was really created by one of the happy children /my gut made up first that it was made up by one of the children on Planet Heart. But the truth is that Planet HeartMark was created by one of the children of that happy couple. And if I bring any more into the conscious level, then I might as well spell it out—My parents are that happy couple, and they made three happy knock on wood children, in real life and that’s why I invented Planet Heart. So it all makes perfect sense.
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