My friend Kate Carroll de Gutes told me she loved my dragons. Then, she said, “They’re always happy.”
I paused. I smiled. “They are.”
I told her that, one day, I’m sure I would make real kickin’ Lord of the Rings-type dragons. Smog the terrible, Beatrice the Malfeasance, and Gregor the Unjust Flayer…or something equally forboding.
But for me, right now, the world is dark enough. There’s barely enough light to see the beauty. I can’t reason making it any darker. Not now. That’s not what I want to create. I can’t spend an hour or two in the darkness every day, pulling myself deeper into the shadows.
My friend Kate can go there; she brings you into the dark and the light in big, beautiful, hearth-breaking and utterly profound ways.
I don’t have that to give you. I’m not balanced, and I’m not honest. I’m unicorns and fairies, a hole bunch of lies, and dang it, I’m gonna act like that poop I stepped in is cotton candy rainbows.
I’ll give you joy. I’ll give you light. Together, we’ll believe in the possible — the wonder. We’ll hope for brighter days.
I see the reality of it all, I read the bone-shaking truth of it in Kate’s work, and it makes me want to turn on a flashlight and make butterflies in the shadows.
It’s unreasonable, irresponsible, and very inane. But that’s what I’m sharing with you. This little purple dragon who has all the cotton candy light.
Read my friend Kate’s work; she’s honest and fair and full of truth. She turns a mirror on your life and reflects and refracts it back to you. She’ll make you pause.
Then, in that space, you’ll be able to go out and make your own light; you’ll show us the dark. You’ll create. You’ll think. You’ll do.
You’ll show us what is possible.
-Kate