Sunday Candy Issue #14

What The World Doesn't Tell You, Grim Grinning Ghosts, Sunday Sounds

Sep 19, 2022

Welcome to Sunday Candy! This is a biweekly newsletter sprinkled with whatever I feel like sharing with you.

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Hi friend,

I hope your week is off to a marvelous start!

Guess what? The next cohort for Write of Passage kicks off soon and I’ll be joining again, but this time around as a part of the Editor team. 🎉

I’m thrilled I’ll get to support students and level up my editing skills in the process. But it’s also occurred to me that this is the first gig I’ll have since quitting my job last year.

And even though it’s only for a few weeks, I’m feeling grateful for the opportunity because I know it’s going to be a meaningful experience.

Will I see you there?

What The World Doesn’t Tell You ✨

It can sometimes feel impossible to not let other people’s ideas of what success looks like influence your own.

I’ve learned to be careful about this. I don’t want to absorb anything that doesn’t align with what feels right to me.

But it’s tough.

In the past, I’ve definitely beat myself up for not having what others had, even when I knew I didn’t actually want their version of success in the first place.

Still, I always felt like I was wrong.

And I’d get frustrated that I couldn’t just force myself to want what everyone else wanted.

Everything would be so much easier if I could, I always thought.

This passage from Eckhart Tolle stands out to me because it reminds me that I’m not wrong.

And if I could go back in time and talk to my younger self, even just a couple of years ago, that’s exactly what I would let myself know.

“You’re not wrong.”

But since I don’t have my own DeLorean time machine, I can’t do that.

So I try to tell myself that now, even if I am still learning and deciding what success looks like and feels like for me. And more importantly, what it doesn’t.

What about you? What’s your relationship with success like?

Does this passage resonate with you?

Grim Grinning Ghosts 👻

On August 9, 1969, the most chilling retirement home opened its doors for the first time in the land of sunshine, dreams, and Disney.

According to Walt Disney, “the nature of being a ghost is that they have to perform, and therefore they need an audience.”

Thus, Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion attraction was set to be a retirement home for all those homeless spirits to do just that.

And they’ve been delighting guests like yours truly, for years.

Despite the fact that the golden state recently came down from a relentless heat wave, the radio has been announcing for weeks that it’s Halloween time at Disneyland. Hence why I’m geeking out over my favorite spooky mansion.

And one of the things I love about this attraction is the history of how it came to be. The process of making the Haunted Mansion included so much play, imagination, and creative tension.

In 1959, artists Rolly Crump and Yale Gracey were recruited to work on it by Walt because of their unique skills.

Crump was a fan of magic and even taught himself how to create stage illusions. On the other hand, Gracey was talented at making moving objects he called “kinetic sculptures.”

They basically got to play around making models, reading ghost stories, and then developed a bunch of gags and special effects inspired by illusions for the ride.

I like that on the surface magic and making models probably seem like random silly things to most people.

But Crump and Gracey got to fully lean into play and their imagination. They had the opportunity to use what they loved and were good at and that’s what made them part of the key ingredients to bringing Walt’s vision to life.

However, Walt died in 1966, before the attraction was completed. This left Animator/Imagineer Marc Davis and background artist Claude Coats tasked to carry the project out.

Both were extremely talented people. Marc was a master artist and skilled at working with audio-animatronics and Claude could design amazing environments and sets.

But there was one problem.

They couldn’t decide whether the ride should be scary or funny.

Davis wanted something lighter, while Coats pushed for more spookiness.

If you’ve ever been to Disneyland and ridden the Haunted Mansion, then you know that, thankfully, it ended up with both. It’s full of silliness and whimsy, but it also has a spooky ominous atmosphere.

And I love that it was through this combination of playfulness, creativity, and a mixture of both dark and light, that such a timeless attraction came to be.