Walt Disney didn’t just build a theme park for childhood fantasy. He created a world we believe in, and a journey to the land of the better self.
A few years ago I was driving around Hollywood in a rental car I’d inherited from the folk singer Beth Orton. We were guests under the Hollywood sign, Beth had a small baby, and it was time for her to go back to London and I kept the car. People leave stuff behind in a car; you get to know them by their parking stubs and beverage stirrers. But Beth’s an original: She left me a CD compilation of the best of the Disney songs, and I cried for two weeks as I drove up Santa Monica Boulevard or over Laurel Canyon or to the beach. I cried in Griffith Park and on the freeway to a shopping mall in Sherman Oaks. I wasn’t sad; I was just, well, Disneyfied — enjoying the small tearful yearnings that come with those songs. One night I stopped at a beautiful edge on Mulholland Drive and looked at the twinkling lights of the city, the years seeming to roll back with Louis Armstrong’s version of “When You Wish Upon a Star.”
Fate is kind
She brings to those who love
The sweet fulfillment of
Their secret longing.
She brings to those who love
The sweet fulfillment of
Their secret longing.
http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com//2015/07/17/happiness-project-disneyland/
