Inspiration

Inspiration is a funny, fickle mistress. Sometimes I hate it. Sometimes it's completely out of control. I can be anywhere-- the most dangerously enlivening places for my grey matter seem to be seasonal sections in craft stores ('specially, round Halloween of course), greenhouses, book stores (book covers and magazines the big offenders) and then there's the big screen. Or more likely, my tiny 10 inch, now obsolete-ish (like most of the things in my stratosphere) Magnavox TV with the rickety pile of VCR, DVD player, and a few VHS favorites stacked on top-- 10 year old wax trails embedded on the screen and over the channel buttons so you can't push 'em and the star stickers and Pee Wee Herman pic stuck on with masking tape...

Inspiration is a vortex. You never know when or where it'll be, but inevitably you'll trip over the rug and fall in, head first. Suddenly you have this idea, and for me everything hinges on that one little notion. It becomes everything. The center of the universe... until the next one comes along. You have to hurry, it's a skittish thing, inspiration. And as inevitable as the idea and the newfound obsession for realizing it, you're guaranteed that when it strikes, more than likely, you will not have the time to nuture it as you feel it should. You have to work. You have five more projects scattered in piles around you, smoldering under a thin, transparent layer of neglect. You're never bored, but you're not getting anything done either. You write them down, try to focus and invest some semblance of time and effort into them so that one day they will be realized and unleashed unto the Earth as fabulously odd and shiny new as you envisioned it to be. The next thing you know you have little bits of paper tucked in everywhere with illegible scrawlings of greatness, pushed in notebooks, pockets or crushed in the bottom of your bag/purse until it's no better than paper pulp.

Oooooooh, paper pulp... *light bulb*

ACK! Goddamnit, ya see?

If you're lucky enough, these little notions may move on to the next step of being. The materials gather, but then you end up with plastic bags and boxes and piles dedicated to each idea, each project-- some overlapping so you don't have what you need for that zombie hand pen and have to go rifling through the dead body bin for the right kind of latex, or over to the half-finished mad scientist lab to find the moss green paint. It's maddening. Never ending.

And I wouldn't trade it for the world.

So, without further adieu, and the point of all this ranting, this years inspiration for Blackthorn Manor's 2010 Halloween Season:

(hello blog! nice to see you again)