Mystical Walt Disney
Someone who said, like Disney did, “If you live right, things happen right” was mystical. Someone that expressed, in his cartoons, the interconnection of all creation, giving life to objects and sentient characters alike, was a mystic. Someone who promoted life over reality by giving the autonomy of movement to fantasy, was a mystic. Finally, someone who placed personality over the physical world by breaking the laws of matter and making such world, in his animation, respond accordingly to each of his characters, (like the sea wave slapping Goofy’s butt when he tried to surf) placed soul over matter, and was a mystic.
Walt Disney lived to create. He faced deprivation and all types of adversity during his life, but never relented. He had the fundamental traits of an ultimately inspirational person for these crazy times we live in: an unshakeable faith in himself, a sense of predestination, the necessary self-detachment to be a channel of ideas, and an unparalleled tenacity. I have written a lot about Walt in a book I called “From Mars to Marceline”, and in a coffee table book I illustrated with the drawings I made of him, giving it the title of Disneyssense (standing for the essence and sense of Disney). What I did in these texts was relating Walt’s personality to everything that he, directly or indirectly, originated. Having grown up with the Disney universe, I never tired of paying tribute to it, for, beyond happy ending stories, I’ve always sensed its profound spirituality. When I visited the parks in the past, I was uplifted from the world of facts to that of ritual. For to buy into a Disney make-believe setting was to re create it and to become a character of it, to be creator and creature at the same time. Like a child before a toy he or she invents stories for at the same time as living through these stories.
Walt’s relationship to Mickey personifies the love between creator and creature, which is the essence of religiosity: “I love Mickey Mouse more than any woman I ever knew”, he said.
A previous card Louis created with this other sketch I made of Walt Disney when young.
Walt was, like Neal Gabler said, a messianic figure, having inspired his team to no end with his pioneering cause. As commented by many, he was paternalistic with his workers but had an iron fist to lead them. However, he was as hard with himself as he was with them. Walt gave his team something that no money can buy: a sense of meaningful and creative purpose in life. The difference between a mere boss and a leader is that the first gives commands asserting his own authority to his employees, and the second grants them a cause which he himself is led by.
Feeling betrayed by the strike in his studio, Disney attributed it to the communist infiltration in Hollywood, and became a conservative. He played the role of uncle Walt, some sort of successful simpleton and honest hard worker any well intentioned American uncle could identify himself with. He became an asset for family, healthy entertainment the Walt Disney co still sells, and often said that he wasn’t “that” Walt Disney. But creativity is a rebellion to reality or to what is crystallized as reality, and it is a shame that the company never rediscovered him as the rebel that he was.
During my Disney quest, I met some interesting Disney people, like Walt Disney’s daughter Diane Disney Miller, who was still alive, Louis Lemoine, who gave me the honor of making the above cards with my sketches, Richard Sherman, and others. I’ve devoted ten healing years of my life to drawing, thinking, and writing about Walt Disney. In those years, I felt there was no separation between this world and the next, and realized that this is the reality of inspiration. I was totally rid of the angst of finitude and got to know real happiness. Thank you, Walt Disney!