April 14 Ollie Johnston died at age 95. Ollie was one of Disney’s “Nine Old Men” but also in a class all by himself. The April 26th Economist carried an obituary: California kid, Stanford graduate, Chouniard art school in LA, and then into the world of Disney in 1935. While you most likely haven’t heard Ollie’s name or could pick him out of a line up, you know his work: Bambi, Thumper the waiter penguin in Mary Poppins, the good fairies in Sleeping Beauty, Dopey in Snow White, Pinnocchio, Sneezy, and first-mate Smee in Peter Pan.
For me what jumped out of the Economist obituary about Johnston was this: “Where his colleagues focused on the “extremes”, the beginning or end of an action, he worked like an “in-betweener”, filling in with his quick, clear lines the smallest progressions of movement in a cheek, a hand or a leg, finding and sustaining the inner rhythm of the character.”
It strikes me that most of the quality in life, most of the grace, most of the joy is actually “in-between”. It found in little actions, small progressions, and simple movements rather than in the “extremes” that our culture glorifies and amplifies. It seems to me that we’ve reached the point that there is little else in public life: hook-ups and break-ups, cat fights and politics of the extreme, hyper-wealth, terror alerts, and bailouts.
Is there a place where you might need to work on your ‘in-between’ game in our world with plenty willing to animate the extremes?
