Tiarnan gets to know his mummy.

Creative activity is usually pursued in solitude. As such our children don’t really get to see us when we are working, most of the time. Thus, it was a revelation for Tiarnan to see his mummy at work, recently.

Tiarnan came into the room, as Syahidah drew.

Curiously, he sidled up to her and gazed on the work, with great, absorbed interest.

He asked to do it, too. Syahidah offered him a pen and he started drawing.

After a while, he looked up, with a definite insight in his eyes.

“Mummy, you are kind of like an artist.”

She was so happy to hear that from him – for he said the word “artist” with such emphasis and relish. Clearly, for him, an artist is a very big thing indeed.

Syahidah carried on her work, with a lingering smile.

Tiarnan did so too.

I watched them, from across the room: two little artists, busily at work: the Master (or Mistress) and the Apprentice. It was warming to see, for I like nothing better than to see people being creative.

What is interesting to me, is just where he got this concept of “artist” from. He is only five years old. My mind is cast back to the episode of Doctor Who concerning Vincent Van Gogh. It could be that he learnt what artists are, from a time traveller. You never know what children learn from TV.

In time, the other two sons came in to watch too. In the end, all of them ended up drawing. It seems that mummy has inspired quite a little burst of creativity, in the household. It is heartening to see.

Happy drawing boys!

(If you would like to support my continued writing of this blog and my ongoing campaign to raise awareness about giftedness and all issues pertaining to it, please donate, by clicking on the gold button to the left of the page.

To read about my fundraising campaign, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-in-support-of-my.html and here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-first-donation.html

If you would like to read any of our scientific research papers, there are links to some of them, here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/02/research-papers-by-valentine-cawley-and.html

If you would like to see an online summary of my academic achievements to date, please go here: http://www.getcited.org/mbrz/11136175

To learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 7 and Tiarnan, 5, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html

I also write of gifted education, child prodigy, child genius, adult genius, savant, megasavant, HELP University College, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, Malaysia, IQ, intelligence and creativity.

There is a review of my blog, on the respected The Kindle Report here: http://thekindlereport.blogspot.com/2010/09/boy-who-knew-too-much-child-prodigy.html

Please have a read, if you would like a critic's view of this blog. Thanks. You can get my blog on your Kindle, for easy reading, wherever you are, by going to: http://www.amazon.com/Boy-Who-Knew-Too-Much/dp/B0042P5LEE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1284603792&sr=8-1

Please let all your fellow Kindlers know about my blog availability - and if you know my blog well enough, please be so kind as to write a thoughtful review of what you like about it. Thanks.

My Internet Movie Database listing is at: http://imdb.com/name/nm3438598/

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Our editing, proofreading and copywriting company, Genghis Can, is at http://www.genghiscan.com/

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. Use only with permission. Thank you.)

Vincent Van Gogh and Doctor Who.

It feels odd to say it, but I was moved, two days ago, by an episode of Doctor Who, the saga of an immortal time traveller. Before you think me too eccentric in my feelings, I shall explain.

The episode in question concerned Vincent Van Gogh. Doctor Who travelled to visit him, at the beginning of his final year of life, upon seeing his art in the Musee D’Orsay. I will not spoil the episode for you, should you be interested in following the adventures of Dr. Who, but I do need to address one point.

Vincent Van Gogh was adjudged by all, himself included, a failure in his lifetime. His art was rejected. He only ever sold one work and that was to someone close to him. In the end, he so despaired of his life, of his social rejection, of his failure, that he took his own life at the age of 37. He died thinking that his entire life had been a failure. He died never knowing what impact he was to make upon art subsequent to his death.

None of us know what posthumous mark we will make. None of us know whether posterity will even give us one thought, or whether all that we did and were, will be lost when the last person who remembers us, dies. This is the common fate of Man. We cannot see what our lives provoke, in the time beyond our final day. We live and die, not knowing whether or not we will be forgotten.

The situation with regards to Van Gogh is particularly acute. His sense of failure was so strong, his conviction that his life amounted to nothing was so intense, that he actually killed himself. Yet, Vincent Van Gogh is accounted one of the greatest painters who ever lived. The tragedy is that he never knew it. The one person to whom this success would have mattered most, never got the chance to witness it.

In Doctor Who, Vincent Van Gogh is transported into the future, to the modern era. He is taken into the Musee D’Orsay to an exhibition of his own work. He is stunned to see that anyone would ever care enough about his works – which he was unable to sell in his lifetime – to exhibit them in a national museum. He is profoundly moved by this, to learn that his life was not a failure after all. Yet, that is not what moved him most. He overhears a museum art guide describe him as the greatest painter who ever lived. Tears well in his eyes. The failure in life, is to be a success in death.

I was deeply touched by this, for there is great tragedy in Vincent Van Gogh’s life. More tragic than his life, was that his early death deprived him of the knowledge of his own eventual acceptance and success. The greatest gift Van Gogh could ever have received, was knowledge of his own future reputation. Van Gogh, in Doctor Who, witnessed what none of us do: what the world thinks of us and says of us, when we are gone. He saw his impact on future time, long after his own death. What made it all the more poignant is that his success in death, should be in such contrast to his utter failure in life.

None of us know what final impact our lives will have, if any, on the world. Even people who are famous in their own lifetimes, may be unremembered just fifty or a hundred years after their deaths. Many a “famous” writer of the early twentieth century is now utterly forgotten. So, too, many of the early film stars. Their names would go unrecognized today, except by film historians. So, too, is it so, for those not known in their lifetimes, who may become famous in death. I find these cases peculiar, for everyone seems to know of them, except themselves: they never lived to see their own reputations blossom.

No matter what we think we know of our lives, we cannot know what will be thought of us after we are gone. Nothing is a guarantee that our memories shall endure – not even fame in one’s own lifetime. We cannot know whether, by having lived, we have changed the world in any enduring fashion. All we can do, in our lives, is to express our uniqueness, as best as we can and hope that the world and the future find value in it, even if we shall never know it. There is one mercy in all of this, however: that is, even if the future forgets us, we shall not be around to know about it. Yet, the opposite applied in Van Gogh’s case – the future remembers him – and he never knew.

(If you would like to support my continued writing of this blog and my ongoing campaign to raise awareness about giftedness and all issues pertaining to it, please donate, by clicking on the gold button to the left of the page. To read about my fundraising campaign, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-in-support-of-my.html and here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-first-donation.html

If you would like to read any of our scientific research papers, there are links to some of them, here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/02/research-papers-by-valentine-cawley-and.html

If you would like to see an online summary of my academic achievements to date, please go here: http://www.getcited.org/mbrz/11136175

To learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 7 and Tiarnan, 4, this month, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html

I also write of gifted education, child prodigy, child genius, adult genius, savant, megasavant, HELP University College, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, Malaysia, IQ, intelligence and creativity.

There is a review of my blog, on the respected The Kindle Report here: http://thekindlereport.blogspot.com/2010/09/boy-who-knew-too-much-child-prodigy.html

Please have a read, if you would like a critic's view of this blog. Thanks.

You can get my blog on your Kindle, for easy reading, wherever you are, by going to: http://www.amazon.com/Boy-Who-Knew-Too-Much/dp/B0042P5LEE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1284603792&sr=8-1

Please let all your fellow Kindlers know about my blog availability - and if you know my blog well enough, please be so kind as to write a thoughtful review of what you like about it. Thanks.

My Internet Movie Database listing is at: http://imdb.com/name/nm3438598/

Ainan's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3305973/

Syahidah's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3463926/

Our editing, proofreading and copywriting company, Genghis Can, is at http://www.genghiscan.com/

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. Use only with permission. Thank you.)

The portrayal of Shakespeare on film/TV.

Shakespeare was a genius and a great one – yet, why, I wonder, is his portrayal so often of something else?

Today, I watched the Shakespeare Code episode of Doctor Who. In this The Doctor travels back in time, to Shakespeare’s era (otherwise known as the Elizabethan era) and meets William Shakespeare. I found the portrayal of Shakespeare, on TV, most disagreeable. In this version of old William, he is portrayed as a man whose ideas are often taken from the words of others. Every time he hears an interesting phrase from The Doctor (actually quotes of Shakespeare’s yet to be written works), Shakespeare says: “I’ll use that!” Personally, I really don’t think it is possible or probable that William Shakespeare really worked in this way. His work is too abundant, too fluent, too of a whole, to have depended on bon mots from others. This, in a very real sense, is a libellous portrayal of Shakespeare – it is portraying him, as a plagiarist.

So, too, did the film Shakespeare in Love with Joseph Fiennes portray Shakespeare as a man whose words sometimes came from others. There, too, he was always on the look out for “inspiration” on the lips of others. Again, I don’t think it possible or even remotely likely that Shakespeare worked in this fashion.

The question is: why do screen writers portray Shakespeare on film in this unflattering fashion? I can only assume that it is because they, themselves, actually work in this fashion. It is likely that they are assuming that Shakespeare is just a better version of what they do themselves. So, since they operate by stealing good lines from others, listening out for “inspiration” on others’ lips – they presume that Shakespeare did the same. They are simply projecting their own methods, onto him.

Thus, the next time you see Shakespeare portrayed as a serial plagiarist, realize that this is simply the author’s way of confessing their own nature and practices – and not the truth of William Shakespeare himself. They are just seeing Shakespeare as a super version of themselves.

In a way, it is very disappointing to see a man of such genius as Shakespeare portrayed on film in such a diminished and diminishing light. I would like to see a filmic rendering of his life, that shows him as he must have been: magnificently intelligent and fluent and copiously creative, to the point of being beyond all other men of his time. Now, that would be a portrayal worth seeing – and one that might actually convey some sense of what genius is, and can be.

(If you would like to support my continued writing of this blog and my ongoing campaign to raise awareness about giftedness and all issues pertaining to it, please donate, by clicking on the gold button to the left of the page. To read about my fundraising campaign, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-in-support-of-my.html and here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-first-donation.html

To learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 7 and Tiarnan, 4, this month, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html

I also write of gifted education, child prodigy, child genius, adult genius, savant, megasavant, HELP University College, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, Malaysia, IQ, intelligence and creativity.

There is a review of my blog, on the respected The Kindle Report here: http://thekindlereport.blogspot.com/2010/09/boy-who-knew-too-much-child-prodigy.html

Please have a read, if you would like a critic's view of this blog. Thanks.

You can get my blog on your Kindle, for easy reading, wherever you are, by going to: http://www.amazon.com/Boy-Who-Knew-Too-Much/dp/B0042P5LEE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1284603792&sr=8-1

Please let all your fellow Kindlers know about my blog availability - and if you know my blog well enough, please be so kind as to write a thoughtful review of what you like about it. Thanks.

My Internet Movie Database listing is at: http://imdb.com/name/nm3438598/

Ainan's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3305973/

Syahidah's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3463926/

Our editing, proofreading and copywriting company, Genghis Can, is at http://www.genghiscan.com/

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. Use only with permission. Thank you.)

Interdimensional travel for a toddler.

Perhaps, one day, the title above will seem normal. Perhaps the day will come when travel between different "dimensions" or times, is as everyday as walking down the street to the shops. Now, however, I suppose it could not be a stranger title - so perhaps I should explain.

Yesterday, Tiarnan took a photograph of himself as a baby held in the arms of his mother and threw it on the floor. He then proceeded to jump up and down on it.

This rather surprised his mother, Syahidah, as she saw him jumping on her rather sweet photo of her with him in his baby days.

"What are you doing to the photo, Tiarnan!", she exclaimed, worried that he would destroy it.

"I want to get inside...inside the picture.", he explained, showing her again by jumping up and then down, with obvious intent of entering that pictured world, in his concentrated features.

What a sophisticated thought that was. He wanted to time travel - to enter the world of the picture in which he was a baby, and his mother was perhaps a year and a half younger. He saw the photo not just as an image - but wished to try it out as a possible portal to another time and place.

He stopped jumping. Later when he was asked to show Daddy what he had been doing, he wouldn't. He had, it seemed, gathered that the photo was not what it seemed: it was not a portal to another world, at all - but just a piece of paper. He let it lie on the floor and looked down at it dismissively. I think it had disappointed him.

He hadn't disappointed me, though. It was interesting what imaginative thinking he has about the possibilities of the world. The pity of it is, of course, that the world itself is not, at this time, as imaginative as he is. Perhaps one day, my little boy, will be a Doctor Who...but for now he is a toddler checking out the possibilities of his world. Unfortunately, for his ambition, they don't presently include time travel.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and one month, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, four years and seven months, and Tiarnan, two years exactly, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, gifted adults and gifted children in general. Thanks.)