Begin Here

The search for inspiration is maddening. Second only to love in its elusiveness, finding and keeping inspiration is like trying to maintain your balance on a branch while some idiot is taking hacks at the tree trunk with an axe. If you are lucky, you can anticipate the whacks and stay aloft briefly, but most of the time you land on your ass and have to start looking for another tree.

My quick fix for finding inspiration is watching Dan Liss' timeless 'Begin Here' - from the comments I can tell that I am not the only person drawn back to watch it over and over for an inspirational fix. I've seen it no less than thirty times. I even printed out the text and left it behind in the 4th Century Cave of St. Anthony in Egypt.

New Years always scares me a bit. I had written a poem some time back in the infamous lost Moleskin called 'Terror of the Blank Page.' The traditional approach to New Years is somehow it provides us with a blank slate to start afresh, so it naturally taps into my fear of the a blank canvas. Over the years I have expounded in both word and in person, that the limitless number of options available to us in this wealthy, western 21st society actually is more paralyzing than it is freeing. Artists often echo this when they set forth on projects with substantial limitations.

Perhaps that is the answer to my own New Years quest. Perhaps instead of a list of resolutions, I should set myself a series of limitations....