What are we searching for?

What need have I of inspirations of my own when I’m being diligently hand fed meaningful resources by those around me?

In response to my musing on the Muse, or substitutions for one in absentia (https://kiwsparks.wordpress.com/2011/08/06/titles-without-tales/), XB writes and asks what moved me to begin blogging in the first place. Short answer: XB.

The longer and more precise answer is that those kind souls comprising my Support Group–loved ones, fellow artists and writers, and those standing ready with the occasionally required kick in the hindquarters–made me do it. There are those who will say that that’s a typically long-winded way of saying the Devil Made Me Do It, but I like to think their motives were altruistic, regardless of what anyone thinks of my output. After all, there was the now-famous critique of a gallery installation of mine, and I quote, If I had stuff like that, I’d burn it. Since that came from my very own Gramps, and I knew that he had zero sense of irony but that, well, he loved me, I feel certain that there was no hidden agenda in the remark. Purely observational. In point of fact, my grandfather would have burned the lot of it without a second thought, but luckily for me he didn’t have his hands on the stuff. Turns out, it simply made me consider more seriously my audience, if any. Granny, viewing the photos of the installation from the other side of the table, loved it. Bless her soul.

My grandmother, let’s be honest, would have loved my work if it were the closest thing to excrement produced by anything other than a mammalian digestive system, because she so closely associated it with me, whom she also loved. I think she really did get a kick out of the art installation in question, aesthetically speaking, but it was irrelevant in the context of the moment. What I was beginning to figure out was that there are as many filters, as many reasons for liking or disliking what an artist does, as there are electrons in the known universe. And that’s counting the town of Electron, Washington. I was also starting to understand that I was compelled to Make Stuff (pictures, poems, stories, sculptures) without regard for whether anyone else would care or not, would like it or not. This was a very useful realization, as freeing as that period when I discovered that if I made larger quantities of stuff, it wouldn’t matter as much if the same percentage didn’t turn out the way I wanted, I just had more to recycle.

Meanwhile, ambling back to the main question (all roads do lead to me) the concomitant bit of info seeping into my lizard brain was that it did matter to and please others that I made my art and that I shared it. So far I’ve never forced anyone to look at or read my work, unless you count teachers required to evaluate assigned things. Thus, I’ve become more comfortable with the idea that if something I do catches someone’s interest, they will likely come willingly to gaze and, if I’m especially fortunate, to make it a communal experience by responding to it as some of you have here.

Which all loops conveniently back to why I’m blogging. I’ve long been happy to haul out the artwork or haul visitors to where it is, if invited (or if a blank wall is foolishly left near me when I’m on a tear). But my friends, family, and other supporters are far-flung in the physical world and we all have remarkably scheduled lives. So when some of the same gang began to suggest that I consider sharing via a more “portable” and less time-constrained medium, the internet, it started to seem like a good idea. Further, when I began to notice how much more I enjoyed the compulsion to write and draw and whatnot if I actually practiced in a slightly disciplined way, not to mention that I sometimes even got noticeably better at it, then blogging at last appeared to be a logical outlet. I acquiesced. Here I am, forty-some posts into it and scratching my head in wonder.

In another completely unsurprising development of the sort that makes me slap myself in the forehead with an appropriately gobsmacked expression, I got a quick reminder that my attraction to art-making is inextricably intertwined with the urge for storytelling; that storytelling is one of the most basic and universal forms of communication; and that I meet and come to know yet another round of good and encouraging and inspiring people via this medium of ether-wandering. From my Oz correspondent at ‘the wuc’ (http://thewuc.com/) to my longtime friend and artistic supporter Mark who shoots me responsive emails from Edmonton, AB, to this morning’s surprise blog subscription from a high school address in Kathmandu, Nepal, I gain strength and hope and camaraderie and ideas. And this morning, from XB right here in my neck of the woods, I get the impetus for a whole new day’s blog entry.

So thank you, XB, thank you spouse and parents and siblings, Jimmy Dale and VN and my personal Dragonfly, and Candas, and so on ad infinitum. This blog’s for you.

With continued gratitude . . .

Never fear, though, while I do indeed have a soft squishy marshmallow center, I also blog because it’s a socially acceptable place nowadays to whine, vent my spleen with unseemly rants and generally behave like my crusty curmudgeonly exterior wants to do. Just a little caveat, my dears, lest you forget whilst I’m busy drizzling the much-deserved honey on y’all.