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MetAphorism: The Costume Box

March 29, 2007 |

[-metaphorism, inspiration-]

metAphorism metAphorism is a word I coined to mean a simple, everyday thing, concept or event that points us in the direction of a deeper lesson.
metaphor - figure of speech giving an implicit comparison: this is that.

aphorism - concise statement of a truth or opinion.

The metAphorism:
The Costume Box
The Lesson:
unplanned, unsorted accumulations are important sources of creative productivity

by Nancy S.M. Waldman

When I was a little girl, we had a big cardboard box in the closet that held anything that could be thought of as “costume.” Never sorted through, never planned, it looked only like an unholy mess. Feathers and ribbons. Fabric to drape and pin. Hand-me-downs and hand-offs from relatives that could never be used in real life. A rabbit-fur muff. A fox stole. A “gypsy” skirt made from horizontal rows of brightly contrasting fabric. There was an evening bag that would bring hundreds on E-bay today. Clip-on earrings without mates. Belts. Beads. Broken things. Unlikely bits of felt and plastic and leather and cotton and wire and pipe cleaners.

The specifics are less prominent in my mind all these years later than the enticing assortment and variety of things.

It was used, of course, at Halloween to devise costumes which were never store-bought. While we sometimes had help from our creative parents, we often came up with our own creations right out of the Costume Box. The other major use was for the garage musicals that my sister, Suze and I put on regularly for fame and profit. Suze was the creative genius behind “Dance through the Centuries” and many others. One was carried out entirely on roller skates (must have been where Sir Andrew Lloyd Weber got the idea). The Costume Box provided the raw materials for transforming us into stage-ready performers.

When I had children, it was second-nature for me to have a box that I threw things into to form their own Costume Box. One summer we rented a condo on the beach with another family. There were five boys in all and I took the Costume Box along, hoping it would provide some entertainment if it rained the whole week. One evening the adults were sitting outside with other people from the condos and our boys came down dressed as characters from Star Wars. Even though there were no store-bought costumes in the box, we watched in amazement as they trooped down in identifiable personages. “There’s Darth Vader!” a child exclaimed. “Oh look! He’s a Stormtrooper!” said an adult. There they were: BobaFet, R2D2, Chewbacca.

It’s truly stunning what our imaginations can do with almost nothing.

None of us became professional performers or costume designers, but the creations that adorned us out of the Costume Boxes had a lasting effect nonetheless. When you have had the experience of making something new out of old cast-offs you remember it forever. It’s not only fun, it’s creative confidence-building in a box.

So when you think about creativity, remember the Costume Box. Don’t let those clutter-clearing shows on TV make you feel too guilty about your accumulation of stuff. Junk drawers, untidy tool sheds, archivist attics, overflowing garages, toy and costume boxes provide raw materials for creative productivity.

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Originally published in the October 2005 issue of The Practically Creative Quarterly, theme: collecting

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© 2005 - 2007 all rights reserved

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also posted in: MetAphorism , Creative Cross-pollination , Inspiration , The Original PCQ, 05-06 , Practice & Practices , Essays - Nancy , Process

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