Why is Sometimes Harder Than How

In my last blog I ranted a tad about inspirations and muses. Then I started searching out other blogs on the subject.

Cintric Cuff: sterling silver, citrine chrysoprase, and a star ruby.

A photographer friend of mine friend had posted a blog where she discussed how she created her beautiful works, and she mentioned that it was easier to discuss how she did it, rather than why she did it. It spun me into thinking about college and having to discuss with professors what we were doing, not why or even how.

I had to explain that my art was about exploring imagery from all sorts of media, explored symbolically and metaphorically, to convey ideas about the human condition, in print and paint, blah, blah, blah.

Then I thought even further back to my childhood. I had a pet hamster named Beef Jerky, but I called him Jerky for short. He lived in a big plastic cage, with tubes that went everywhere. He had rooms with different stuff to do in each.

Jerky had a bad habit of scrubbing his butt all over the cage. He rubbed it on his food bowl, his exercise room, his bed, his love nest where he wooed the mamas.

Then Jerky died. I woke up one morning and he didn’t move, and he hasn’t moved since.

I got a new hamster. His name was Stash, short for Pistachio. The cage was his. I gave it to him. And, stash spent weeks smelling around the cage, every tube, every room, even the love nest.

Then I figured it out. Stash was smelling Jerky’s butt rubbings.

Now, whenever someone asks me why I am doing what I do no matter what the medium, I tell them, “I am just rubbing my butt on this cage.”

Tagged as: Musings