Joni Mitchell on a fall morning with the sun heating up the volvo as I drive slowly down Euclid. An unadorned, nostalgic excitement about making art that feels entirely present. A calm clarity. Memory and longing:
The elm at the edge of the woods when I was a kid. Long spider-leg arms thick as trunks and the rotted-out center at the place where the branches spread. How I would climb onto that flat perch of soft dusty wood and peer into the neighbors yard. Thinking, I could sleep up here, I could live here if I needed to.
Listening to mix tapes in high school from my first boyfriend. Somehow he’s managed to record his own voice over Paul McCartney singing I’ve Just Seen a Face and he’s added my name into the chorus. I’m in the mildewy basement. I’m in a pink satin dress taking melodramatic self portraits on black and white film. There’s the concrete crawlspace and how it smelled. The boxes of slides and negatives kept in the way back where it’s too dark to see.
Fifteen years old, it’s 4am on a Tuesday and my hands are sticky with oil pastels. My bedroom a sanctum of solitary rebellion. An entire night that I can own.
What does your inspiration feel like? What does it feel like when you’re filled with that holy presence that comes like a rush and sweeps your insides and you’re left vibrating, empty, open, alive?
Arriving like a remembrance and a promise at the same time. A reminder that there’s still something inside, waiting for an open door. It’s always been there, it’s not going away. It’s part of who you are, it’s who you are.