Unraveling Am
"Do what you really love." How many times have I heard or read those words, I don't really know. Nor do I really know what that means. I know... that sounds stupid. I can hear a few voices asking me "You don't know what you love?" Damn! Where does one begin with that question..?I love to sleep. But that is only when I'm tired and need to sleep. I don't love to sleep just for the sake of sleeping. I love to eat. There again I don't love to just sit around in my favorite chair and just eat anything. I love to eat when I'm hungry... when my stomach empty and my instinct tells me: "Hey! It's time to eat!" But those are physical needs. Everyone has a certain level of 'love' for those things, don't they?
So, other than that what do I really love? What about my mate? Sure, I love her. No doubt there. My two sons... absolutely. Family and friends I love. But 'doing what I love'... that's not a real easy pick.
I love to paint. But that is only when I'm inspired. I have to be inspired to paint. Then the love of creating an image is grand... a feeling that can easily be described as 'love.' How about writing? You bet! I love to write. But there again is the impetus: inspiration. I have to have something to say... something to write about. I can't just sit down and blabber without some thing that inspires me to do so.
What about music..? Definitely. I love listening to music. I never had enough patience to learn music in order to play music, but listening..? When the right music is there, when the music I'm listening to allows me to be swallowed up in it... then that is when I love music. But do I really want to listen to music as a doing thing? No. But that's not because I don't love listening to music, but because when I'm inspired by something within the music, I go with the inspiration.
Going with the inspiration is a wonderful thing to do. Is this going love? Well, the flow can bring love of whatever may become of being within the flow, but sometimes I find myself being taken by a flow to a place that I would not call love. I'd rather do something else than be in that place I found myself.
So, doing what I love is still not clear. It's too general. I love to do artsy things. I even do some jewelry creations. These were initially inspired by my mate, SooZen, who happens to do what she loves to do - make ornamentations (jewelry). When I'm inspired, I too, love doing jewelry making. But I don't always have the inspiration to do so. My output of jewelry making pales to my mates output. As a matter of fact, my image making output is not 'huge-normous' when one compares the years since I first painted an image and to this date. Most painters would easily have in the high hundreds and even in the thousands, the number of paintings they have done in 45 years.
Doing what I love is beginning to look like I love doing what inspires me to do. To an outsider to my way of being, this time interval between inspiration and completion is one of idleness. And maybe it is. It could be analogous to waiting for the phone to ring before you talk. One could wait a very long time waiting to get a phone call. All the while, just sitting around practicing talking, usually in silence, and even extreme times talking out loud to yourself.
But let's face it - inspiration is a gift. We could argue endlessly about who is giving the gift. Base line: that's not nearly as important as the inspiration. Of course, inspiration comes to us on varying levels - from being inspired to cook a special meal, fixing a special margarita, even something like re-arranging the furniture in a room. These are inspirations that allow us 'to do.' Getting a haircut, buying new clothes, a new pair of flip/flops, getting a tatoo... all inspiration driven. We can even draw inspiration from seeing how dirty our floors are. We 'see' how the dirty floors somehow detract from our frame of mind so we see how they will look and how good that will make us feel, so we clean them. Maybe that will help us, cleaning the floors or buying new clothes or getting a haircut... many simple, small things to further inspire us. Maybe we'll be inspired to do something really big. It doesn't have to be big in size, but big enough to reflect our potential.
Inspiraton equal to our potential. Not doing what we want but having the freedom to do what we are. Are we not potential? I have the potential to do a variety of things and stuff. You do too. But these potentials are limited by inspiration. So where do we draw this inspiration from? It could be as simple as observation - watching this and that until something within that 'this and that' jumps out and inspires us to full potential to also reflect what we are... not a carbon copy of what inspired us, but rather agreeing with ourselves that yes, I can do my inspired version of that which inspired me. Maybe a painting. Maybe a written story or poem. Maybe a song... not that we can all sing like pop stars, but maybe we can write a song that a pop star can sing.
The one thing about using our potential to accomplish our inspiration is knowing the tools to manifest that inspiration into the concrete. Make it live. The more familiar we are with the tools to create, the more likely we are to create that which inspires us. So it would follow that when we are not inspired, we practice using the tools... become more familiar with those things that make an inspiration real, so when the illusive inspiration bolts in on us without invitation, the greater our ability to transform the inspiration into something tangible.
But what if I was inspired to write an orchestral piece that defined "The Bliss of Inspiraton"..? I'd be at a total loss. I don't know the first thing about writing music... all those symbols and representational notes that speak of music are foreign to me. I'm not prepared to do anything of that magnitude. Would inspiration of that nature ever strike me? Or would it avoid me because that particular inspiration 'knows' I'm not the proper candidate to translate that inspiration into a musical tome? Curious.
Now that is something I personally love doing: answering questions like not only what inspires people to do what they do, but why does inspiration choose those that are able to transform an inspiration into some thing. I'm not really an 'artist', but simply an image maker. I'm not really a writer but more of a talker that puts my own words into print. I'm not really a poet but rather someone that occasionally writes a poem. I'm not a jewelry designer, but someone that enjoys putting some design into a piece of jewelry. But a thinker! Now that is something that ol' Cec' is pretty damned good at, if I say so myself.
I do not like questions that seemingly do not have answers. I attempt to find answers for any questions that come my way... no matter how trite and no matter how complex, I enjoy finding answers to questions. And I'm challenged by putting those answers into the printed word.
So I ask myself, "Are you doing what you love?" and I must answer, "Yes, I am."
Cecil
13 August 2006
Adobe Blocks
...potential not yet filled
[photo by Cecil... image taker, 7/02/06, Old Mesilla, NM]
*
our potential
like a stack of blocks
lying in a pile or
lying in disarray
awaiting the
creation of
what we are
but what we are
deep inside
can only be revealed
one block at a time
surely placed
while time awaits
giving us opportunity
to complete our being
giving us a ticket
to move on
another world
another place
another time
to create once again
a new potential
a new being
given to us
as inspiration
not to be feared
but taken and held
a treasure from
the mystery
that longs to
be held
beheld
by our
potential
*</center>
...potential not yet filled
[photo by Cecil... image taker, 7/02/06, Old Mesilla, NM]
*
our potential
like a stack of blocks
lying in a pile or
lying in disarray
awaiting the
creation of
what we are
but what we are
deep inside
can only be revealed
one block at a time
surely placed
while time awaits
giving us opportunity
to complete our being
giving us a ticket
to move on
another world
another place
another time
to create once again
a new potential
a new being
given to us
as inspiration
not to be feared
but taken and held
a treasure from
the mystery
that longs to
be held
beheld
by our
potential
*</center>
TY, amiga.
