An ode to noticing things…

two days ago, I woke up and the world smelled like fall.

I don't really know how else to describe it.

It wasn't particularly cold. There weren't piles of orange leaves swirling around my feet. No one had handed me a pumpkin spice latte while a scarf dramatically blew in the breeze.

It just smelled like fall.

And I noticed.

I like that I notice things like that.

I notice that sometime over the past year, people have started sticking their green #myCMA stickers to the fire hydrant outside the museum. There are enough of them now that the hydrant is slowly becoming its own tiny piece of street art and i wonder - do others notice this too?

Two days ago i also watched a man walking down the street carrying one perfect red rose And immediately I wanted to know the story.

Who was it for?

Was he meeting someone?

Was it an apology?

A first date?

An anniversary?

Did he just see a rose somewhere and think, I want that rose because it’s beautiful.

I will never know.

Which is probably part of why I like it.

I notice things.

I listen.

I watch people.

I make up stories about strangers who will never know I briefly turned them into characters while they were crossing the street.

I dream.

And I've been thinking lately that maybe these little observations aren't separate from the things I make.

Maybe they are where the making starts.

Not with sitting down at a desk and saying, Okay, Joy. It is now time to have an idea.

That sounds horrible, actually, because usually that is when the creative block hits me literally like a ton of bricks.

Ideas rarely seem to arrive when summoned.

They sneak in sideways.

A fire hydrant covered in stickers.

A stranger carrying a rose.

Flowers that become more interesting as they begin to wilt.

The first morning that smells unmistakably like another season.

A piece of artwork that somehow makes me stop even though I spend much of my life surrounded by art.

A sentence I overhear from the couple sitting behind me in a restaurant.

A color combination.

A question.

Something makes me look a little longer.

and I wonder about it.

And sometimes the wondering disappears as quickly as it came.

and sometimes it stays.

That's the part I'm starting to pay more attention to.

Because I think there might be a rhythm here that I haven't really named before.

I notice something.

I wonder about it.

Eventually, I want to make something from it.

Maybe I write about it.

Maybe I photograph it.

Maybe it becomes a painting.

Maybe it gets scribbled into one of the approximately seventeen places where I currently keep ideas and then disappears for six months.

Also part of the creative process, apparently.

But the beginning is almost always the same.

Something made me look.

something made me remember.

something made me linger.

And then something made me wonder.

Maybe inspiration isn’t one magical lightning-bolt idea. Maybe inspiration is what happens when we notice something, let it linger, and keep following it long enough to see where it goes.

Maybe the noticing is the beginning…

Until next week,

Joy walker