I put photos from the Good Faerie Ball up on Beach Treasure. I'll remind you of the link at the end of the post. I saved a couple of close up pics, of a more crafty nature, to share here.
This is my friend Katie's wonderful copper Steampunk wings. (sorry 'bout the low light, I hate flashing folks) I love that they turned out like Katydid wings that Katie did. Hah! (If you're not familiar with the term Steampunk, first of all, what rock have you been hiding under, and secondly, Goggle "Steampunk" or better yet "Steampunk fashion" and you'll have more links to visit that you can carry home in your brass grommetted, driver begoggled, steam engined time machine.)
More copper Steampunk wings created and modeled by the lovely Mackenzie.
That's it for the wing pics but the copper aspect, being the best conductor wire around, segues nicely into what I want to talk about next - electricity.
The kind that flows into our households and power our days and, in my case, much of my nights. Or rather, the kind that's supposed to flow into our households. Two nights ago for reasons known only to the Household Gods, electricity stopped flowing to about half of our house. Suddenly I had no sewing machine, no space heaters, no bedside lamps, no microwave, no popcorn maker, no cordless phone, no music, no tv in the back bedroom, and last but not least, no espresso maker.
I did a few rounds of arguing with the circuit breakers and quickly reached the end of my working knowledge of currents and amps and all live and dangerous wiring. It took a couple of days before we found a local electrician and late this afternoon were, at a gratefully reasonable (knock on wood) out of pocket expense, fully re-electrified.
But while the power was out.... half the power was out..... I quite unexpectedly learned how deeply grooved were many of my daily rituals and routines. Not being able to read in bed, being forced to read at night on the couch and THEN go to bed, was surprisingly upsetting! No lattes was annoying. No microwave meant teaching my son about this old fashioned way of heating food - called an "oven".
The irony was that I'd spent most of the week after coming back from the faerie balls trying to push myself through some sticky inertia of unknown origin and into the studio. I'd finally managed to do so and was happily sewing away, when the breakers popped and the studio lost all power, my hardwon momentum coming to a screeching halt.
It wasn't until early this morning that something I said out loud, can't remember what now, suddenly laid the two struggles - getting the energy back to full capacity in my house and getting my creativity back to full capacity in my life - side by side in my brain. A lightbulb went off in my head. (Obviously it was in my head, duh, the ones in my house weren't WORKING!) There's a connection here, said one of the voices in my head.
Another voice piped in "Yeah a connection............ but what is it?"
Eventually everyone up there inside my skull started adding info and offering suggestions. Over the last week I'd been talking a lot to people (people outside my head) about focus. About channeling creativity. About making choices. On and on I went, talking to people on the phone, over a cup of coffee, inside the circus tent of my own mind. I bet you can come up with many of the same analogies - electricity flows, creativity flows. Circuit breakers, creative blocks. Plugging in to new ideas, plugging in the new CD player. Electricity can be channeled through wires or just poured out in an electrical storm. Creativity can be channeled into a specific goal or frittered away in unproductive (albeit pleasant) ways.
At one point I thought maybe I had it. By cutting off many of my electrical options,the message was specifically about how I should be limiting my creative options, in order to focus. And yes, that's the gist of what I've been trying to do, channel, focus my creativity. But if that was the message, you'd think the universe would have cut off the wiring to my internet connection and the big ass television in front of the comfy couch, and not cut the wiring to my studio. Not quite right.
Even when it's not the middle of the night, I haven't figured out the specifics of the "aha" feeling I get about the connection between creativity and electricity. I don't think I even care. What excited me was the idea of thinking of creativity in a new way. It makes me feel incredibly cheerful and optimistic to think of it not as something inside me, but as an independent force, a living current out there in the world.
Something about.... it's not me, it's my equipment. Like, the movie isn't lousy, the cable reception is lousy. The song isn't wrong, the radio receiver isn't strong enough to pick up a good signal. My ideas aren't weak, my.... well, my focus, to come back to the word, isn't set up properly. When I think about fixing my focus as a technical problem, instead of as a muse or an emotional or a life problem, it sounds a lot easier (and more objective) fix.
Okay, that's it. End of incoherent babbling. I tried to reread that last sentence and could barely make it from capitalized first word to the.... sentences stop at that little dot at the end, right?
Oh yeah, I was gonna remind you - faery photos at Beach Treasure.
1 comment:
Thanks for sharing the Steampunk Wings, how kewl are they?
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