If you are a subscriber to our weekly newsletter, Displaced Dispatch, you’re already in the know. But if you’re not (and why aren’t you? off with your head!), listen up.
Every week, when that esteemed publication comes out, we present contenders for a monthly “Alice Award,” most of whom are writers or other kinds of international creatives who appear to have a special handle on the curious and unreal aspects of being a global resident or voyager.
Not only that, but this person tries to use this state of befuddlement as a spur to greater creative heights.
Today’s post honors January’s three Alice recipients. Starting with the most recent, they are (drumroll…):
1) AMBER PAULEN, American freelance writer and copyeditor based in Rome, and blogger at Descriptedlines
For her post: “Paesaggio Interiore” (Interior Passages)
Posted on: 17 January 2014
Snippet:
Dreamers are thought to be opposite of the practical, yet I see no difference. Imagining is a practicality that we use in order to survive—an imagined outcome may prevent us from a certain action—but it also makes our lives better. Imagination is the begetter of empathy and the foundation of utopias. It is also, on a minute basis, a way of interpreting the world—the wider these interpretations span, the farther the imagination sees, the more adaptable we are, one of the human race’s single best attributes. Try to find an intelligent mind with a small imagination.
Citation: Amber, we could not agree more with you about the practicality of dreaming, and about the need to put greater value on the life of the mind. Scrolling through the endless photos of man-made and natural scenery that occupy so many travel blogs and Pinterest boards these days can have a numbing effect, reducing life to a set of exterior images—in denial of the fact that each of us possesses some pretty vivid, not to say revealing, internal scenery. What’s more, we believe that the imagination is an extremely powerful, as well as much under-rated, survival tool for expats—the key to our adaptability, as you might put it. On the days when your new life in X country is looking rather grim or mundane, you can always slip into a fantasy land, pretending you’re a royal or a hungry hyena, just as Lewis Carroll’s Alice was wont to do:
And here I wish I could tell you half the things Alice used to say, beginning with her favourite phrase “Let’s pretend.”
She had had quite a long argument with her sister only the day before—all because Alice had begun with “Let’s pretend we’re kings and queens;” and her sister, who liked being very exact, had argued that they couldn’t, because there were only two of them, and Alice had been reduced at last to say, “Well, YOU can be one of them then, and I’LL be all the rest.”
And once she had really frightened her old nurse by shouting suddenly in her ear, “Nurse! Do let’s pretend that I’m a hungry hyaena, and you’re a bone.”
For his post: “Why weird people are often more creative,” in Fast Company
Posted on: 10 January 2014
Snippet:
In a 2003 study, Carson found that eminent creative achievers were seven times more likely to to have low rather than high latent intelligence scores. That insight prompted her to form a hypothesis: that cognitive disinhibiting allows for way more info to enter into your conscious mind–which you can then tinker with and recombine. The result: creative ideas.
Citation: Drake, we commend you for marshalling the evidence to support something that Lewis Carroll knew intuitively, without the benefit of Carson’s (or anyone else’s) study. Indeed, the world Alice discovers when she steps through the looking glass is teeming with flaming weirdos who, while they may seem rather dim witted at times, let’s face it, are super creative. Take this encounter with Humpty Dumpty, for example, in Through the Looking Glass:
“You seem very clever at explaining words, Sir,” said Alice. “Would you kindly tell me the meaning of the poem called ‘Jabberwocky'”?’
“Let’s hear it,” said Humpty Dumpty. “I can explain all the poems that were ever invented—and a good many that haven’t been invented just yet.”
3) MILDA RATKELYTE, writer, photographer and a budding filmmaker based in Singapore
For her post: “Lessons from 2013,” in her blog, Milda Ratkelyte Photography
Posted on: 1 January 2014
Snippet:
This year I am starting with one simple resolution—slow down and find the time every single day to smell the roses. Although 2013 was probably the hardest year in my life, I am grateful to all the strength it gave me and all the invaluable lessons I’ve learnt along the way…Never take your loved ones for granted, because life is so fragile that you never know if you will get a chance to see them again. Pick up the phone, tell them you love them NOW, not tomorrow or next week. Trust me it will make a huge difference.
Citation: Milda, we have appreciated your lens on the wider world ever since we featured you and some of your photographs in our monthly column “A Picture Says…” And now that you are learning the price of a peripatetic life—living far away from your loved ones, who may be suffering—we appreciate your emotional honesty. As Alice herself discovered when parted from her beloved cat, Dinah:
Down, down, down. There was nothing else to do, so Alice soon began talking again. “Dinah’ll miss me very much to-night, I should think!” (Dinah was the cat.) “I hope they’ll remember her saucer of milk at tea-time. Dinah my dear! I wish you were down here with me! There are no mice in the air, I’m afraid, but you might catch a bat, and that’s very like a mouse, you know.”
While Alice’s concerns are trivial compared to those currently confronting you, we wish that like her, you discover a garden of red roses (only in your case, may they not smell of fresh paint!).
* * *
So, readers, do you have a favorite from the above, or have you read any recent posts you think deserve an Alice Award? We’d love to hear your suggestions! And don’t miss out on the shortlist of Alice contenders we provide in each week’s Dispatch, which are sources of creative thought if nothing else! Get on our subscription list now!
STAY TUNED for tomorrow’s post, an interview with some American entrepreneurs in Senegal.
Writers and other international creatives: If you want to know in advance the contenders for our monthly Alice Award winners, sign up to receive The Displaced Dispatch, a round up of weekly posts from The Displaced Nation, with news of book giveaways, future posts, and of course, our weekly Alice Award!. Register for The Displaced Dispatch by clicking here!
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