Bringing the Brooms to Life

The Neurodivergence of Fantasia: What the Sorcerer's Apprentice knows about troubled magic

It’s a good thing they put Mickey on the cover of Disney’s re-release of Fantasia in the 1990s. If my mom had any clue what Fantasia really is, she wouldn’t have picked it up in the middle of a grocery run.

If she had known about the fairies and the flowers transforming into synchronized swimmers or the rainbowed centaurs or the crescendo into angry demons, she would have thought it was a bit too much for her six-year-old. But I’ve always been a child of the too much, and the first time I watched Fantasia, it felt like a homecoming. I had never experienced anything that dances, sounds, and morphs so much like my own mind.

Like the music it takes its name from, Fantasia is free-associating. Free-form. No overarching plot or structure. Images in Fantasia improvise against each other without context. Colors burst and dim with the rise and fall of the music, not unlike how my own mind makes a synesthesia of color and sound, tone and texture.

It’s a movie that people seem to either love or hate, all or nothing.

There’s a conductor, but that’s easily forgotten once the music begins. It would be easier to believe the instruments are playing themselves, having exhausted the hands of the ones who might control them.

I’ve always counted on the magic in Fantasia, but what surprises me now, as an adult working out a late revelation of ADHD, is how much the trouble shows up in the film too.

I worry that speaking of the trouble will feed me right into the mouth of the diagnosis machine, like the devil that rises at the end of Fantasia.

So much writing about ADHD is either about managing the trouble (so you can be more productive, more useful, more palatable) or about dealing with someone who brings the trouble into their workplace, their school, their marriage, their family.

ADHD literature is essentially a genre of “dealing with.” The tone is often prescriptive, aimed at correction. It revels in what I think of as The Language of Last Resort. Consider these titles from a list that ADDitude Magazine calls “The Top 25 ADHD Books of the Last 25+ Years:” Driven to Distraction. The Explosive Child. Transforming the Difficult Child. The Mindfulness Prescription for ADHD.

A familiar counterweight to this language is to speak of ADHD via its so-called gifts:

Yes, there’s impulsive thinking—but don’t you love the ideas I come up with? Yes, impatience—but don’t we sometimes get where we need to go faster, and in a more interesting way? I’m not all shadows and daydreams—think again, I’m also a unicorn, a fairy turning the seasons over, a flower dancing upside-down when you said it couldn’t be done.

This story line is tempting, but it’s also not entirely honest. And I’m not sure who it’s actually for—me or the people dealing with me? I don’t love the language of “superpowers” and wish it would stay away from how we story neurodivergence. Being re-storied and belonging with others only on the terms of exceptionalism is just a prettier way of being “dealt with.”

I want a more elegant and honest ADHD story. I think we’re overdue for it.¹

Elegant, honest stories hold tension. They examine the bittersweetness without the urgency of correcting it.

The story might not even instruct or improve anything—god forbid we have a story of ADHD that doesn’t get filed under self-help. The troubles and the curiosities live together in a story like this, and sometimes it’s hard to tell which one is which. They play off each other like color responding to music.

In an elegant story, at least the one I’m imagining, there’s no prescription for “dealing with” ourselves or translating for an unfamiliar (or fed up) audience. Elegant stories are projects of expression, not translation.

So I need to risk writing about the trouble in my own way, and I need to hope that I can do it without falling into the mouth of the diagnosis machine.²

Fantasia knows something about the magic and the trouble, and the magic in the trouble. It’s right there in the moment featured on the VHS cover: Mickey as the Sorcerer’s Apprentice.

The music of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice and this part of Fantasia are both based on Goethe’s poem of the same name, written in 1797.

The poem is said to come from even older folk tales, which feels like another reminder that what we call a diagnosis now often draws from some older, less pathologized source. In that way, the sheer age of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, and the fact of its survival, makes me feel less alone. 

As the scene opens in Fantasia, the sorcerer is conjuring the wings of a bat and transforming them into a butterfly. He yawns and realizes it’s time for a break. (Even this realization—I’m ready for a break—feels like a kind of mastery to me, a kind I might forever be apprenticing.) He leaves his hat on the table and heads upstairs, and immediately, the apprentice moves in to the fill the absence.

I like how this transition is illustrated concretely: while tiptoeing across the room, Mickey’s shadow grows larger and larger until it consumes the wall. Mickey grabs the hat off the table and puts it on. At this moment in Goethe’s poem, the apprentice declares that with the power in hand, my art I will show.

There is no discernment, no pause, before these moments. There is only Impulse—the imaginative yet trickster offspring of two gods in the fantasia mind: Impatience and Curiosity.

Using what little he remembers of the sorcerer’s spells, the apprentice dispatches a broom to pick up a bucket and get to work to fill the bath:

Come, old broomstick, you are needed, Take these
rags and wrap them round you! Long my orders
you have heeded, By my wishes now I've bound
you. Have two legs and stand, And a head for you.
Run, and in your hand Hold a bucket too.

Flow, flow onward Stretches many, Spare not any
Water rushing, Ever streaming fully downward
Toward the pool in current gushing.

In the film, the music rises as Mickey pulls up his sleeves and fixates on the broom. He stretches out his arms and his fingers dance, as if to transmit all his energy to the broom. I can’t resist thinking of this as a stim—the pull of call and response between a restless body and the nearest object, the restless energy getting channeled into something external.

The broom bristles to life, and Mickey dances his fingers even more frenetically in the air. He calls the broom forward and points to two buckets of water on the floor. Arms sprout and reach down to pick up the buckets.

I recognize the inexplicable urgency of this spell-making. I recognize the trouble that’s already starting to form. And I know the way the traditional ADHD narrative would story it: executive function (the sorcerer) is absent and the “explosive child” loses all sense of priorities and good behavior.

In the absence of a steady sorcerer and in search of a good fix, the fantasia mind can bring anything, even brooms, to life. There’s truth in it. Maybe I just prefer the language of folk tales to the language of clinicians.

One way I think of my restlessness now is as a tub where the stopper is never quite set. For me, there has always been an urgent need for more—more magic, more water, more action—because the tub never has a chance to be full. To feel satisfied, you might say.

Satisfied. A word that never ripens for me. A word that tastes dry and sour on my tongue. A word that is lukewarm green, the lime with too much yellow in it. There is no juice for me here.

Except for one time, which is also how I’m sure of that word never.

The first time I felt satisfied at the end of the day, it caught me by surprise. A newfound calm appeared when I sank into the couch in the evening. The fact that I was aware of the time and wanted to sink into the couch at all was a tell. Like the sorcerer laying down his hat, something told me: I’m ready for a break. This was new.

The feeling began in the center of my body and moved outward as a warm and steady wholeness. Maybe this is what some people call ease? It was not elation, not happiness. It was missing the verve and sense of anticipation that I feel as happiness—the electricity of bringing things to life.

Instead, this new feeling had the heft of a dog curling up in my lap, bringing me to equilibrium. Around it was the hum of what had been done, rather than the hungry dream of what I might do next.

More than anything, it was the feeling that I could trust myself. Whatever wasn’t finished today, I could count on and leave for tomorrow.

I honestly didn’t know there is a relationship between these things: that the ability to feel satisfied one day is also the spell that lets you trust yourself the next.

The little golden charge of discovery ran up my spine—I suddenly understood just how fantasia I am. Because it hit me hard: this was also the first day I had taken the stimulant that worked for me.

On the one hand, it was freeing. I liked this new feeling of satisfaction. It was eerie yet calming to feel an enoughness within myself. Maybe the magic could consistently outpace the trouble, at last.

On the other hand, it was startling. And upsetting. To feel that new feeling of satisfaction and just know—on an acute and electrical buzzing-in-the-bones level—that no amount of “don’t expect so much” or “just take it one step at a time” or “take it easy, rest” will ever be able to conjure it for me.

What I sensed all along is actually true: I’m innately not wired for that kind of contentment. For me, it took a controlled substance to find it.

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Every revelation in this process keeps a double life. Where I find a breakthrough in feeling satisfied, I also find further proof that I’m just as alien as I suspected.

Where I’m glad to know I wasn’t wrong about myself, I also begin to realize I’ve spent many years explaining myself in a world that mostly wasn’t going to understand.

Like the apprentice who remembers only part of the spell (and never the part that undoes the trouble) I can’t shake the feeling of having been fooled and needing to start over, knowing at last (or at least more of) who I am.

But diagnosis is not, in itself, belonging. And medication, in itself, is not the antidote. The alien in me, whom I have known longer than anyone or anything else, is skeptical of any allegiance or identity that feels too ready-made.

Instead, I feel as fantasia as ever, maybe more than ever, as I morph between grief and relief, never wanting to pin myself to any story that moves in too straight a line or toward too easy a conclusion.

Mostly, now that I’ve glimpsed its possibilities, I wonder what trust has to do with this and if, or how, I trust myself. That moment on the couch was like watching my impulses turn into a color I had never seen.

How do you separate music from noise, magic from its aftermath? In fantasia, a restless impulse can sound and dance so much like good instinct when it first appears. There is no foreshadowing of whether angels or devils wait at the end of the story. (Foreshadowing relies on a plot, and plots don’t survive here. They’re too boring.)

I see the brooms I’ve brought to life. For better and worse, they leave a paper trail: changes of address, a dozen different versions of my driver’s license, marriage licenses, job offers, resignation letters, quitclaim deeds.

Like the musician who knocks over his chimes in the middle of Fantasia, there’s always the possibility of collapse, the music clattering to a stop. By my thirties, my life has already held so many rises and falls that when I get a new mortgage, they make me sign my name five different ways. A full page of signatures, each one to announce and verify: Yes, this version too. This was also me, once upon a time.

When I return to Fantasia as an adult, I see it even more clearly: Destruction and Self-protection are conjoined twins in the fantasia mind. They are the older and more domineering siblings of Impulse.

In the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, while Mickey dozes under the influence of his magic, the water grows around him. He dreams of commanding ocean waves and stars, only to wake up and discover how his impulses have turned on him. He tries to stop the broom as it carries more water, but the broom throws him into the tub, which is now overflowing. The dream that set him free is now the devil that might drown him.

Again, I recognize what comes next: without hesitation, to protect himself, he believes there is no choice but to destroy his creation.

It might be one of the most unsettling parts of the movie for me. Even Mickey—the whistling, ever faithful, “gee golly” leader of the pack—can spiral under the influence of fantasia. The music crescendos and the room flares red. Mickey takes an axe and chops the broom in two. We see Mickey’s silhouette, the axe coming down with force, the shards of wood as shadows bursting off in all directions.

To his horror, the trouble only magnifies: the broom split in two becomes two brooms. The wood shards reanimate. An army of brooms now marches in search of water, eager to fill the tub.

What was one problem becomes many, and Mickey is quickly overrun—yet he still doesn’t pause or seek help. He doesn’t wake up the sorcerer. We can’t know what he’s thinking, but I promise in this moment, he doesn’t imagine getting help is an option. If that possibility drifts toward his mind at all, it's swallowed by waves of Alone. Alone. Screw it, no one understands.

Instead, he takes a bucket and begins shoveling water out the window, as if he might single-handedly outmatch the trouble. To anyone watching, this is clearly wasted effort, but he has no idea how foolish it looks. The water grows until it forms a whirlpool around him, sucking him in.

I think of the times Carl has witnessed the whirlpool of fantasia in me—how he tries to point out what’s coming, to help me avoid the inevitable splitting-in-two, splitting-into-many. How often my response has been: “Don’t manage me.” That hiss of You don’t understand.

Destruction is its own variation on satisfaction, and it’s a quicker spell to learn than accepting help. Don’t tell me how full the bucket is or how the water is supposed to feel or where it should go. Give me my axe. Get out of my way.

These extremes can seem impossible for a grown adult. As Carl once wondered, “Why is it all or nothing for you? How can one mistake possibly have ruined your whole day?”

If knowing alone could answer these things, I would have already learned my way out of this. I’ve heard it’s a common feeling among the fantasia people: Why is this hard? Why doesn’t anything add up? I should already be a sorcerer by now.

If Fantasia is neurodivergence, this book is actually an etymology dictionary.

Ruined. A word I love. There’s a video of me, around age six, on a tire swing in my grandparents’ backyard. I’m not happy. I scream at my nearby brothers and cousins: “You ruined my life!”

But I scream it with a deep ooo, like the sound of injury at the center of wound: “You rooooned my life!”

In that moment, I know it was entirely true for me. I don’t remember what instigated it, but I remember the feeling. I remember because I still feel that way at times as a grown woman. I still prefer words that are heavy on the oooo. Words that hold waves and risk drowning.

The trouble is not the knowing. It’s not the face-value reality of what was said or what needs to get done or what mistake was made. The trouble is the feeling, the invisible energy unspooling before I have a chance to recognize it. The trouble is when the music spins into restless spell-making—the broom multiplying before I realize what I’ve done.

At the end of this sequence in the film, the sorcerer finally returns. He’s furious to discover what Mickey has set in motion. With a wave of his hands, the sorcerer right-sizes the magic.

I pause the movie. Rewind, play again. A wave of his hands. The sorcerer brings order back with a single, natural gesture—executed like it cost him nothing.

I’m struck by how Mickey doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t try to explain himself—where would he even begin? How do you explain impulse when you’re surrounded by water, when you’re caught in the absurdity of the damage?

Like one fantasia responding to another, my mind laughs: Refrigerator.

As a child, I got curious about the commercial-sized fridge in our church’s basement. I was supposed to be going upstairs for Stations of the Cross, but Curiosity, that old god, birthed Impulse’s hungriest sister: Obsession. I had to know how the fridge’s handle felt. Was it cool metal or would it hum with warmth? I had to know what this strange beast looked like inside, what kind of voice box it had.

My dad stepped away for a moment. I raced for the huge doors, pulled them open with gusto—and a full gallon of chocolate milk crashed down and swirled in every direction across the floor. My dad was furious when he returned. “Why did you even go in the fridge? What were you thinking?” ³

There was no answer that would make any sense. The spell was broken. I suddenly knew how stupid it was. I knew I was old enough to know better. It was a fridge! What was I expecting—a secret room? Stupid. It was so stupid, I thought. A thought which quickly slipstreamed: I am so stupid. The afterglow of shame. My impulses always seem to have a better imagination than reality does and, left to make sense of a very non-fantasia world, they are never done fooling me.

But it’s what happens next in Fantasia that I might understand most of all: Mickey doesn’t rest. He doesn’t pause to reflect on what happened. He doesn’t ask to change into dry clothes. He doesn’t come up for air, despite nearly being drowned by his own magic.

The sorcerer frowns. Mickey returns the hat and broom and then gives him a sheepish smile, as if his attention is renewed. As if a persistent optimism, an eagerness to please, is what waits when shame recedes.

He picks up the buckets. He goes off to start fetching water again.

1. It’s happening already, especially on Substack and social media. I find it a bit in books like Rebecca Schiller’s A Thousand Ways to Pay Attention. There’s more happening around neurodivergence in general, and some really wonderful, expressive books by autistic writers (I can share my reading list if folks are interested)—but with ADHD specifically, I feel like we’re only beginning to shake up the foundational texts that have set the tone so far. We’re elbowing our way into the story they’re telling about us. We’re making entirely different places to trade notes with each other. May our impatience and invention help us here.

2. (Can we meet in that spot? I feel like any reimagined story of ADHD is going to require a different kind of collaboration between writer and reader. Like watching Fantasia, you’re going to have to suspend your disbelief sometimes.)

3. Worth noting that my dad was dressed as Jesus, wig and robe and all, for a play at mass that evening. So please imagine the christian sorcerer cleaning up a floor’s worth of chocolate milk here. Jesus was pissed.