Monday’s Inspiration: A Change Is Better Than A Rest?

“We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive at where we started and know the place for the first time.” – T.S. Elliott.

It’s possible to get so caught up in your ambitions that you lose sight of where you want to be. There are so many tempting pathways, so much hard slog, so many times when it’s possible to forget that it’s the journey, not the destination.

And often when that happens, our creativity dries up. Try as we might, there’s just nothing there. The well is dry. For writers and artists and other creative people, it’s important to recharge the well. No matter how much we might want to hide in our writerly caves and just write, unless we go out into the world and experience something new, something that excites us, that river of creativity, of ideas, slows to a trickle and then, well, it stops. And we’re left frustrated. And maybe a little crazy.

I’m speaking from experience here. I’ve had a busy year, writing and being published, and each success seemed to bring about new

ideas, new plots, new characters. Until one day, with several almost finished novels, I sat down to type and there was – nothing.

It took leaving home to refill that well. The excitement of being in a city like Toronto after the tiny hamlet where I live. The colors, sights and sounds of Chinatown – a totally different culture from my everyday existence. 

And then, bliss, the beauty of the exhibits in the Art Gallery of Ontario, where we spent at least four hours browsing an exhibit of the wonderful Maritimes artist, Alex Colville. 

Returning home, tired but buzzing with ideas, I couldn't wait to get back to my keyboard. I may even haul out the canvas and paints and be inspired to try some acrylics of my own again, just for fun. 

It's wonderful to have fun back in my life! Yes, the change was as gfood as a rest, to quote that old folk truism.

That inspiring, if somewhat disturbing, exhibit by Alex Colville?  If you can go to it at the AGO, don't miss it! That’s a story for another blog, and you can read it at www.rosesofprose.blogspot.ca I hope you do drop by!