I made this image with AI. I’ve enjoyed using AI to work out some of those things I am preoccupied. Not that I am preoccupied by dolls – haha – but things that are disturbing. Things you see that you know maybe you shouldn’t get quite so affected by. A kind of.. liminal space somehow.
Well I created this post a long time ago somewhere else. But now that it’s three years alter and since we are on the subject…
Dolls
The doll that was given to me as a child smelled of unpleasant, artificial smells. Plastic, rubber, whatever it was, I didn’t like it. It had reddish hair. I knew I was supposed to like it, that this was a thing given to me, that was to be played with. I didn’t know what to do with it, with that smell. I named it it Baby Ferrier. A distant, non-committal name that I didn’t really like either. I’m sure I must have tried to play with it, placed it in a baby carriage we had around. Put a blanket on it. I had no memories of doing this with the doll, though, only the cat. And yet the memory of that doll remains.
Dolls
My daughter had a doll that she loved as a young child. I don’t think I gave it to her, I don’t think it would have occured to me. It’s eyes moved open and closed depending on whether it was sat up, or laid down. It had plastic forearms and hands, and plastic feet, a plastic head, but the body was a stuffed sort of thing that hid the batteries that worked once upon a time. If you pressed the baby in certain ways it would probably cry or laugh. I think she might have called it Baby.
It went frequently without clothes and went everywhere and acquired the dirt only a thing like that can aquire. My daughter put something like sugar or salt or maybe it was sand in one eye, the way kids do things like this. The eye would get stuck open or closed giving the doll a slightly deranged look. Over time the eyelashes got pulled off one eye from here using the eye lashes to open and close the eye as needed.
My daughter would carry it around absently minded by the foot. Despite all this, I felt a primal visceral alarm seeing the head of it bouncing off each step as she dragged it down the stairs.