Fine Flour From Fine Flowers

When I worked for Disney Animation in Florida, I attended a lot of meetings.

On a regular day, my schedule was punctuated by visits from other departments, and feedback reviews with directors and producers. Occasionally, I got to meet famous actors from our movies, but my biggest meeting of the week came every Monday, when all of the Disney Animation Offices around the world were linked via phone and video, to discuss every project in production.

Around me in Orlando, other department heads sat around a long table in a large conference room. At the end of the table there was a huge television, and on the screen was a ‘continuation’ of the table situated in a bigger room in California, where the LA heads of department sat. Once in a while the screen image switched to display similar conference tables in Canada and Paris, when it was their turn to speak.

At the head of everything sat Tom Schumacher, our flamboyant and amiable President of Feature Animation, who ran these meetings in a very upbeat, fun and energetic style. One by one, each movie reported progress to him. Some were still in early concept development, and others had scripts and character designs to share with the room. Some projects were in full production, and once in a while a movie proudly announced its final completion.

I loved this particular meeting best, because it gave me such an interesting look into the future of this large and fun division of the company. I also enjoyed it because, as a lowly head of the Animation Check department, I really didn’t have to contribute much. I just needed to observe and listen to the information being presented.

Then on one particular Monday in June, this anonymity vanished when Tom Schumacher began the meeting with a hope and a wish, that Disney’s 37th animated feature film ‘Tarzan’ was going to be successful.

- “I know it’s going to be a huge hit,” he announced. “Knock on wood.”

As he said these words, he rapped his knuckles on the large conference table in LA, which prompted everyone to do the same to their tables in Orlando, Paris and Canada. As the knocking sound echoed across continents, Tom Schumacher asked a question that entirely changed these meetings for me:

- “Why are we doing this? Why are we all knocking on wood for good luck?”

Words and phrases can often go though some amazing journeys to arrive at their modern definitions. Sometimes, the same word can even separate into two completely mismatched meanings as it finds its way into separate English speaking countries.

For example, if an American animator needs to correct something that they have drawn in pencil, they will use an "eraser". In the UK, the same object is called a "rubber". I learned this the difficult way, and I will never forget the puzzled look on the American artist's face when I asked if I could "borrow a rubber" from him.

My interest in the origins of the English language came in very handy around the Disney conference table, because I happened to know a few reasons that are claimed for why we knock on wood for good luck. Some believe the custom is linked to Christianity, and touching wood represents a connection to the cross. However, the superstition actually goes back further into more pagan times, when it was once believed that trees were home to malevolent, mischievous spirits. So, if you stood next to a tree (or anything made of wood), and expressed a hope for the future, it was feared that these supernatural sprites might overhear, and try to jinx things and prevent your wish from coming true. Knocking on wood was a way to make a noise that would prevent the spirits from hearing, and by fortunate coincidence, one of the sequences in Disney's 38th animated film, ‘Fantasia 2000’ actually features sprites in the forest.

I thought that this explanation provided a neat little tie-in to our ‘knock-on-wood’ session, so I emailed the information to a friend in the LA studio. He forwarded my message to Tom Schumacher, who invited me to share this with everyone during the following week’s meeting.

I was more than a little nervous to face the entirety of Disney Animation leadership, but thankfully my performance went down well. After I finished, and received a nod of approval from Tom, this grew into a regular five minute spot in the meeting every week, to answer questions like:

- “Hey Dan. Why do we say: ‘love’ meaning: ‘zero’ in a tennis score?

- “What does: ‘The whole nine yards’ refer to? Nine yards of what?”

- “Can you find out who ‘Pete’ is exactly, in the phrase: ‘Oh, for Pete’s sake’?"

This week, I was pondering the Disney memory as I wandered around my home garden. The tomatoes are starting to look really healthy right now. With home confinement providing me more time for gardening, I have been carefully pruning the tomato plants so that they grow along one single vine. This is working really well to put energy into fruit production, and each plant seems to be in a nice regular growth pattern – one level of leaves, followed by one level of flowers; one level leaves, one level flowers, and so on. I knocked on their bamboo supports; not for good luck, but to disturb and vibrate the flowers, to encourage self-pollination and large tomatoes.

This got me thinking; and it also got me exploring, to reveal some wonderful gardening discoveries that exist in the world of word origins.

For example, due to its light and misty quality, the word "pollen" is rooted in the Latin for "fine flour". It's where we get related words like "polenta" and "porridge", which are made by "pulverizing" grains. "Pulverize" also came from "pollen", as do the words "pulp", "pulses" and "pale". I love the way that words can intertwine and connect through time to the same root; like the word "root" for example, that produced words like “licorice”, “eradicate” and “radical”. “Rooting” for a sports team came from the way creatures make excited noises as they dig – or “root” - around searching for food.

It's almost like the words themselves are physical, reaching across the passing of time like vines, occasionally touching ground to seed new words. The word “vine” itself is what I use to describe my tomato plants as they climb up their bamboo poles, and meanwhile long ago, it created other words like "wine", "writhe", vignette, "vintage" and "vinegar".

In recent months I’ve learned that life does not always need to be a rush away from home and family, and that there is enormous pleasure in watching simple things grow in my garden. In the aftermath of this crazy Coronapocalypse, I hope that the world will also learn and slow down a little, and become a better place.

How could it not be, since the word “aftermath” itself is a gardening reference? Dating back to the 1500s, it refers to a second crop grown on the same land, after the first had been harvested – literally “after - mowing”.

That word/life connection is the kind of poetry that gives me hope and optimism for the future - (knocking on wood).