Destino

When I was ten, my family and I visited Madrid during the June holidays. Most of the details are hazy now, as snapshots of Madrid’s busy streets flicker in and out of focus. But one moment stood out: a visit to the Museo Reina Sofía. While we saw Picasso’s Guernica, which was impressive in its own right, it wasn’t what captivated me; that honour went to a Salvador Dalí exhibition. I remember walking inside, the air cool and still, as if it had been preserved just for the works on the walls. The room smelled faintly of old paint and polished wood, like a mix of time itself and all the people who had come here before me.

The first painting I saw was one I recognized immediately - ‘The Persistence of Memory’. The melting clocks, draped over barren branches and strange, fleshy shapes, stared back at me, softer than I’d imagined, like time itself was tired and sagging under its own weight. Standing in front of the painting, I struggled to understand why those clocks were so memorable.

Around me, the walls were lined with more of Dalí’s creations — strange, elongated figures, dripping landscapes, creatures with either too many or few limbs. Everything felt like it was slipping away from reality, like the room itself was bending to match the odd shapes in the frames. I glanced at the titles: ‘The Elephants’, ‘The Face of War’, ‘Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee’. Each one was a puzzle, some code I didn’t fully understand at the time but wanted to crack.

After what felt like hours — though it could’ve only been minutes — I spotted a corner in the space. Something about it felt like an invitation, like stepping into another dream, but this one was moving, alive, just like the colours on the walls. The room was darker than I expected, the only light coming from the small screen ahead, flickering as it pulled me in before it went out. I slid onto the bench, facing the silk screen, and waited with a nervous excitement, like I was about to open a door I couldn’t close again.

Then the light returned.

A title which read how two geniuses came together to create a short film, but never came to fruition while they were alive. The names of the geniuses appeared - Dalí and Walt Disney, before fading to a title screen which read ‘Destino’.

It’s impossible to fully describe this beautifully animated, six-minute short here, but I can try. Set to a song of love lost and rediscovered, the short featured a woman seeing and undergoing surreal transformations. Her lover’s face melted off, she donned a dress from the shadow of a bell, and at one point, her head transformed into a dandelion. I recalled ants crawling out of a hand and morphing into Frenchmen riding bicycles. Not to mention that towards the end, there were turtles with faces on their backs colliding to form a ballerina, as well as a bizarre baseball game. From melting clocks and hourglass sand, a figure rendered in strips, to a conch shell filled with eyeballs, the style and themes of Dalí were clearly recognizable throughout. As the credits rolled and the room turned dark again, I felt like I had just been shown a secret, something only a few people got to see.

‘Destino’ didn’t cross my mind again until almost three years later, during art class. We were deep into our surrealism unit, and for our final assignment, we had to create a surrealist piece. As Mrs. Sarich, the art teacher, explained the project, I couldn’t stop thinking about that short film and the Madrid trip. It seemed like the perfect example of surrealism and how it could twist reality into something both strange and beautiful.

“Mrs. Sarich, can I show something that could help with the module. any of you heard of Destino?” I found myself asking, my hand half-raised.

Mrs. Sarich turned to me, intrigued. “What is it?”

“It’s an animated short film - a collaboration between Dalí and Disney. I think it could be a good fit for this project — it’s about time, love, and… well, it’s hard to explain. But I think it could help.”

Her eyebrows lifted with interest. “Dalí and Disney? Now that’s fascinating. Why don’t we play it?”

***

The room grew still as the music began and the projector hummed and flickered. Some of my classmates had been talking just moments before, whispering and shuffling in their seats, but now there was only the sound of the soft, haunting melody. I sat at the front, resting my arms on the desk, eyes fixed on the screen as the familiar images unfolded before me, just as they had in that small room in Madrid. For a moment, I forgot I was in class at all. Around me, I could hear the quiet murmurs of awe, the soft gasps from a few students. Even though I had seen the film before, I still felt that strange, electric pull in my chest, the same feeling I’d had when I was ten. When the animation faded and the music drifted into silence, no one moved for a moment. There was that same pause, that same quiet, like the air had been holding its breath.

Mrs. Sarich was the first to break the silence. She stepped forward from where she had been standing by the projector, her arms folded loosely, a thoughtful smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.

“That was… something,” she said, her voice quiet but filled with that same kind of awe I’d felt when I first saw it. She looked at me, her eyes soft but curious.

“Yeah. I saw it when I was ten.” Despite the nervousness now that all eyes were on me, there was also a spark of pride, like I’d just shared a piece of myself that mattered. “I didn’t know a whole lot about surrealism back then, and I didn’t really understand the film, but it stuck with me.”

At the time, it was different from anything I’d ever shown before, more personal. The memory of Destino still flashes in my mind, and now I realise how much that strange, beautiful short film had shaped the way I saw art now. Surrealism wasn’t about explaining every detail. It was about feeling it.