Personification as a Cheat Code for Creative Expression
From ancient Greece to Disney’s Inside Out, personification is a timeless creative tool.
Let’s start with three character sketches:
1. Crush is a teenager with big eyes.
Crush wears an orange scarf, blue headphones, and carries a torch. He wants you to see someone, really SEE them, in a new light. He paints your cheeks pink and dots your arms with goosebumps. He shares a Spotify Duo account with his older roommate, Unrequited Love. But they have strictly separate playlists. Crush loves to doodle on the last page. Secrecy makes Crush feel stronger and sharper. Eventually he gets tired and goes to sleep but he will rise again and hug you from behind, when you least expect it.
2. Laziness has a huge lap.
She wears deep purple cotton sarees and calls to you with the silkiest of whispers. You feel safe with her. She sings lullabies to your to-do lists. In the afternoons, she arrives with rice and mangoes, glazing your gaze with drowsy syrups.
When you were a child, she would shake her lap, pat your forehead and put you to sleep. Now, she is addicted to the smartphone. Your father warned you about her. You distanced yourself. But she still texts you with a purple emoji, "Hey baby, don't keep the chai cup in the sink now! We can do it 2 days later.”
3. Sexuality is a queer goddess.
You'd think she loves the moon, but she is ready to flirt with the sun. She is as curvaceous as ocean waves. She loves to peel fruits. Her fragrance is not fruity though. Nor flowery. Yet so strong it can wake you from deep sleep.
She carries a huge pot on her waist. You are born with her containers. She starts pouring silver into them only in your teen age. And doesn't stop until you tell her to stop.
Trauma and Sexuality grew up together. Trauma is a noted historian. He writes detailed reports on your body and leaves notes for Sexuality: ‘Handle with Care’.
Sexuality listens more than she speaks. She can teach you how to dress up, and how to get undressed. Once you embody her philosophy, you won't recognise yourself. Blessed by her, you walk like a pianist's fingers. You savour silence. Even the way you drink water looks different. Sexuality was so amused when you invited her partner, Creativity, but not her. What? Did you think Sexuality was single? No way.
Personification as a Cheat Code for Creative Expression
The above experiments with personification were inspired by ‘The Book of Qualities’ by J. Ruth Gendler. Reading her character sketches and writing my own offered me both a sense of play and plenty of solace. Here is her sketch of ‘Change’ —
What is personification?
Personification is God. I don’t mean it’s divine. It is actually a very human thing - to impose human qualities on abstract ideas, objects, and other species. So what is ‘God’ if not the personification of a higher power?
Personification is not always neatly done, and can spiral out of control. But when done deftly, it shapes the shapeless. Painters, sculptors, animators play with as much as writers. Personification was derived from the Greek word prosopopeia which means ‘giving face.’
Quiver Quotes suggests:
Full-blown personification of non-human entities is usually the province of children and the insane, but it shouldn’t be. It’s an essential imaginative method for enriching any environment.
Poet Amanda Gorman echoes,
It's kind of like looking at something that's been silenced and giving it a voice.
Personify your problems and watch them disappear
From ancient Greece to Disney’s Inside Out, personification is a timeless creative tool. Found more often in children’s poems, it is ever present in its more subtle forms. Margaret Atwood’s heat breathes, Thoreau’s lake has lips, Michael Jackson’s horror looks at you. Emily Dickinson’s Death became a character in the TV show based on her life.
I wonder if personification helps us befriend what scares us and makes us feel less lonely.
The podcast Everything is Alive is another example of personification, creating full blown characters out of everyday objects. A few years back, Vimoh personified India as a person in a toxic relationship, and I am glad she is finding a way out.
In a culture of constant objectification, I love personification. Next time you face a block, an obstacle, a difficult emotion, a pain you can’t name - personify it. Draw it with words or images. Let it speak to you. Watch it resolve itself.
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I am so happy to read this! As an architect and city explorer I have often personified places and buildings in my writing and hence your piece just clicked for me! hanks for the book references too!
"It's kind of like looking at something that's been silenced and giving it a voice."
WOW and Wah!