Missives from the Hinterlands

How do you revive something long dead? Enthusiasm isn't enough. Lazarus didn't come back because his family really wanted him to. He came back because it was part of God's plan and He chose to intervene through his mortal son, Jesus. How will my divine intervention manifest itself? Or, more properly, divine inspiration. 

I don't need something to raise my blog from the dead. I have the power of resurrection in me. I just need something to make me want to do it. After all, breathing new life into an old carcass takes effort, It takes energy. Lots of energy. And it doesn't always end up well. Just ask Dr. Frankenstein...

My muse was a young, angry muse, and my young, angry days are far behind me. Maybe it's time to find an old cynical, but basically happy muse. Does such a muse exist? Maybe it's Clio's older sister. You know, the one who curses and drinks too much, cries sometimes, but laughs more often. I wonder if she has some time to spare... 

Whether my muse comes or not, I need to do something. I need to tap back into my creative side. I feel it fading, and that scares me. Creativity is vitality. One can live without it, but it is a flat, gray life, a life in which the days run together into an undifferentiated blob of existence. Creativity is the paint that provides the shades and contrast that make for a vibrant, colorful life.

When we're young, we paint with big splashes of color, always bold, often clashing. But our canvas is small and crazy colors and aesthetic choices are more containable and less "over the top." As we age our painting tends to become more more detailed, delicate and subtle. It's often more nuanced and muted because the wild approach of youth doesn't translate well to a much larger canvas. And painting larger canvases takes more energy, so much so, that it's often easier to just stop painting and let the dull comfort of entropy take control. 

But comfort does not beget art. Or at least it doesn't beget good, evocative, challenging art. In some ways it's easier to be uncomfortable when you have no choice. I don't mean that it's better to be involuntarily uncomfortable. It actually sucks, but no one can deny that it's motivating and challenging. 

So the key is to tap into the motivating pain of discomfort from a position of comfort. How does one do that and why? Well, that's what I'm back here in this old spot to figure out.