What the Fran

Joyride Spring 2026

Joyride is my zinething I previously wrote about but as a post. I don't know, I'm trying it out. If you're on RSS I cordially invite you to take a look at the page!

Notes on joy

How can we quantify joy? Should we even be trying to?

A map, a recipe, a prescription, an equation, a menu. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Joy. Can I make a game about it?

‘Glimmers’ are tiny moments of joy. The opposite of triggers.

Mindfulness seems important - being open to noting the sensation of joy.

Where joy hides and how to find it a TED Talk by Ingrid Fetell Lee, April 2018

These are a few of my favourite things

joy /joi/
noun
Intense and especially ecstatic or exultant happiness, or an instance of such feeling.
An expression of such feeling.

joy, contentment, pleasure, comfort, elation, bliss, ecstasy, merry, delight, wonder, happiness

Henri Matisse, The Snail, 1953

Matisse's The Snail, bold colours in a vaguely snail-ish shape

who Matisse, aged 83, a year before he died, suffering from arthritis
what a collage, papers painted in gouache then cut, pinned, and pasted in place
where made in Nice, currently in the Tate Modern, London
when started summer 1952, finished early 1953
why Matisse said of the technique that it ‘allows me to draw in the colour. It is a simplification for me. Instead of drawing the outline and putting the colour inside it - the one modifying the other - I draw straight into the colour’

"the samba school turned into a crowd and the crowd turned into a momentary festival. There was no “point” to it - no religious overtones, ideological message, or money to be made - just the chance, which we need much more of on this crowded planet, to acknowledge the miracle of our simultaneous existence with some sort of celebration."

Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy
by Barbara Ehrenreich

I feel joy a lot. Joy as in delight. I have worked to cultivate the ability to get excited about the little things. Actively finding joy.

But also there's that deeper emotion, behind joy, of happiness and contentment. And then behind that, feeling alive. It's the 'feeling very alive' part I try to concentrate on more.

Make your own thauma­trope

A thaumatrope is an optical toy introduced in 1825.

Cut out two circles with part-images and stick them back-to-back around a pencil or something similar. To be fancy and more structurally sound, try sandwiching a bit of cardboard in between. Roll backwards and forwards between your fingers to see the complete image.

Two circles, one with a bowl and a fish, the other with a cat dipping its paw

Other versions attach string to either side and the image is formed when the disc spins. The classic image is a bird on one side, a cage on the other. I've used Henri Matisse's Cat With Red Fish (Chat Aux Poissons Rouges).

An extract.

The lamps are being lit as Rosalie leaves her lodgings. She has been on her feet working at the easel all day and can't quite bring the world into focus. Nor has she eaten, her stomach complains. It makes her feel alert.

She walks with the rhythm of the evening streets. A good pace - people have places they want to be and the sky is threatening. Rosa has somewhere she needs to be. Twenty-five minutes to Fleuron Court.

Into the park and a finger starts conducting the orchestra. The sky is seething - there are patches of blue and clouds tinged orange with the sunset, but others are massing dark grey. It’s almost, almost, the most beautiful thing Rosa has ever seen. She gazes up at the trees, brushes her hands over the bark as she passes. A greeting. A thank you.

Her whole hand waves in the air. She worked hard today. Her hands are all the colours of water in the sunshine. She has put her hands in the river. Drawn out treasures. This hand was in Adelaide’s last night at the orchestra. This other hand in Adelaide’s a few weeks ago. Yet they look much as they ever did.

It’s starting to rain. She didn’t bring her coat. The coat from Adelaide. How had she ever taken that coat off? Hadn’t she resolved to live in it forever?

Birds take off from a tree and wheel overhead. She wheels below, looking up at them and spinning around as they pass. She hops up onto a kerb. Fully committed to her orchestration now, her arms wave around.

The rain is cold. She will not be allowed home. She will have to stay. She will have to fall asleep to the sound of Adelaide breathing. She will have to see Adelaide tomorrow morning in her nightgown. Dishevelled hair. Be brought coffee.

The light is almost sinister, everything is sharp. Lightning, somewhere over the rooftops. The clouds flash. Everyone is hurrying and clearing the place out. Rosa hurries through the gates from the park for an entirely different reason.

Here, Fleuron Court. Here, Adelaide.

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