Inspiration or Insanity…

I have been called crazy probably a million times.

Lemme ask you something.   Is it crazy to look for ideas from the world around me?  For example, the picture above is actually a white strip in a parking lot that marked the spot that I parked in.  Upon opening the door, I looked down immediately and saw this.   I know most people will see random grey and white markings and not much else. To me, it looks like a cosmic notice calling out.  I can see my name.  Well, at least the first 3 letters.  What are the odds that I was just about to put my foot on this exact spot as I got out of my car.

This is how I see the world.  Check out this:

This image I took in the parking structure of the Santa Clara Library.  It is simply a tire smudge on a column.  I see a Native American tribal elder.

I call this one a Crystal Skull.  I got this image when I was closing a window one day.  This is just a reflection off the glass, but it freaked me out a little.  I know that our brains are  hard wired to look for patterns.  Facial patterns are usually the easiest ones to recognize. I find a ton of them in the dots on our bathroom floor.

I don’t like to think of myself as crazy, though I can see why people would use that word. I know that my imagination is always working.  Sometimes it is a curse when I can’t turn it off at night.  I like my skewed view of the world and even though I see a lot of dark things like this image above, I try to always focus on the fun and happy things.

Goofy things are the best kind of things and they always seem to find me.  I call the next one “red Wilson”  Hahahahaha.

I never thought I would find a use for any of these pics aside from the first one, but it was nice to dig back in my photos to see this pattern emerge.

I look at the world and see things all the time that I glean ideas from.  The smallest things like  a steady stream of cars  driving over a grate give me the beginnings of a beat for music which I usually forget before I can get to a computer.  I will see the way a vine trails up a stake and seek to place that motion into a dance step.

Somewhere in my “insanity” I find my inspiration.

How do you get inspired? Nature hikes?  Those are fun, too.