“Letting the child play” resonated with me in 2020 at the time in my life (dream and real) with all the seriousness around we can get in a more relaxed place by remembering to ‘let the child play“. This could be the children children or the inner child of the adults. For this reason I have the theme of ‘Wonder‘ for the month of September in my blog. . In the process of doing three paintings and yes the child play and my dreams have been a huge part of their development. Now to a dream I had in 2014 ..it was in the afternoon and in a hypnagogic state … I saw a child .. then a doll’s face and a box of toys .. said in the half-waking .. half-dream state felt “that’s fun!” In the box was my book “Journey to Dodoland” … it’s a big book and was standing on its side … used my telescopic thing Ive been doing lately and zoomed into the book … saw a woman on the stage dressed in gold.. zoomed in to see who it was .. it was Kazuko Asaba from Japan …
and performance was taking place in a theatre .. there was a stage and people were sitting in the audience … woke up at this point.
My feeling was happy .
Reality Check: My book of ‘Journey to Dodoland’ was my first published (picture book) and one of the main themes is being imaginative so wasn’t surprised it was in the fun box .. The woman in gold was a woman who read my second book Magical Earth Secrets ( environmental story) and has done work in Japan ( she has a Art Centre) with it as a basis for fifty years. You might be also interested to know this story came from a dream I had one night in 1979.. and I woke up with a feeling of a rainbow on my finger and wrote the first draft … thanks to the dream producers… it became a book produced by 100% Parade. She and a Producer and costume designer in Japan called Ruu Ruu have produced this as a play. I will be enclosing various posts later on this production and you will see them on the link to Dodoland in Cyberspace photos. They are on the front page.
Action: The interesting thing for me in the dream is that the Dodoland book was shown which I am not sure she has seen .. felt an action I could do it make sure she sees the Dodoland story when in Japan. Dodoland went up on the internet in 1995 as Dodoland in Cyberspace and has had 2 million visitors to the site. It is a free site and still exists today as an ‘act of love‘ by myself and my husband Dale Bertrand.
Anyways back to the dream, because of this Dodolaand dream when Dale and I went to Japan four years later to see the performance of the play “Magical Earth Secrets’ called in Japan ‘Magical Rainbow’ I took with me a copy of “Journey to Dodoland” (the big original edition) and gave it as a gift to Kazuko Asaba. She asked me to do storytelling at her Kazaba Art School of the story and I included ‘Journey to Dodoland.’ The storytelling included Giant Flower Islands which is macro photos by Dale Bertrand. I have written a book called ‘Art for One World’ with the story of Dale Bertrand’s and my contributions in ‘One World’ projects as well as Kazuko Asaba’s work over 50 years. This was also shared. Her son Dan Asaba is now leading workshops during this Covid time and continues being playful and imaginative like his mum. Noticed yesterday he is having the children making marionette puppets and large sculptors and is ‘letting the children play‘.
Create a Dream, with Della Burford 