Voracious reading - in my case, scanning - upsets pattern. The pattern that once was seen as you having a style. The style when you’d found it once was showered with accolades, pats on the back and, perhaps, and a lot of attention from the opposite/same sex. Obviously you begin to stick to your ’style’ so the parade continues. Soon that pattern becomes predictable…and your expressions, boring.
When you are affected by greatness, you do two things: feel inspired, or feel like shit. Great artisans inspire you to break free and scream with your own voice. Your voice can be your pen, your keyboard, spatula, cello, hammer, brush, and anything that gives record to that dam of yours that hath broken loose.
Inspiration means not being afraid to express yourself anymore; not having doubts about what you’ve been holding back. You hold back, I hold back, and ‘they’ hold back. Sometimes we hold each other back. Most of the times, however, we hold back assuming that some things ought to be. We can’t judge the beauty of our idea-faces unless they’re born, can we?
This post was written in long hand on November 10th, 10:36 am, at the 181 street Starbucks. I’d just finished the Jerry Uelsmann interview/profile on Shutterbug (Sep. ‘07). His work and words gave me a poke and said, “let your mind go free”.
Written with a Pilot G2-07 on the back of a print-out of an Editors Guild magazine article on The Simpsons Movie. Borrowed from a student at the next table who has no idea this post exists because of him and his pen. Total whoa moment there!
What if I hadn’t asked for a pen?
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