As a writer and visual artist, I constantly scour the bookstores and art stores for inspiration like a kid in a candy store. It's a constant battle to keep inspired. Before I know it, I am knee deep in my mediocre life forgetting I am lost in the grey and banal existence of working a 9-5 job, juggling a household, remember to eat right and exercise all a while hoping I get enough sleep--let alone write? Create art?
But there in the modicum of desire lies my fantasy of a writer and artist life. What are they really? Is it the masculine existence to live feverishly and crash and burn like Jack Kerouac or Earnest Hemingway? Is it the kill-myself-in-the- short-end like Virginia Woolf? I think in today's world it may actually be the slow death of unguided, anxiety-riddled, bombarded by useless information dichotomy. We eat too much carbs, carcinogenic meats and processed foods, work in menial, uninspiring jobs, that we end up dying by our own demise subversively anyway and instead of alcohol as our poison, it is opioids and loneliness.
I waste away noodling through the interwebs instead of my writing or art-ing, but I have this blog, and at the very least I am working my way through the drudgery, the painstaking process of starting the process. I know I will find my way again. Some stops are longer than others. Once I situate myself with the right amount of inspiration, I am there again. My most productive was when I was in college producing my own volume of work in my MFA program. Thereafter, I have produced in short spurts. In the meantime, I collect books, novelties, trinkets, and quotes to squirrel away upstairs for more leaner times.
Want some inspiration? Here are some books & novelties to surround yourself with and refer to. May you "Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart".
"This literary tapestry of the human experience will delight readers of all backgrounds. Moving year by year through the words of our most beloved authors, the great sequence of life reveals itself—the wonders and confinements of childhood, the emancipations and frustrations of adolescence, the empowerments and millstones of adulthood, the recognitions and resignations of old age. This trove of wisdom—featuring immortal passages from Arthur Rimbaud, Sylvia Plath, Virginia Woolf, David Foster Wallace, William Shakespeare, Herman Melville, Jane Austen, and Maya Angelou, among many others—reminds us that the patterns of life transcend continents, cultures, and generations."
"This carefully curated book, packed with original research, is a go-to resource for thoughts on a variety of subjects, including originality, punctuation, reading, daily routines, rejection, money troubles, the creative process, love, truth, and more."
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