Jan 15 2009
Where Do You Get These Ideas?
That’s an actual question from someone I have never met face-to-face, and only on the Internet playing an online game that has a mail service within the game itself. It conjured up two pictures in my head immediately. ( I do believe the off-switch in my brain is footsed lately)
- Robin Williams (2? Why not)
- The Big Burn @ Snowmass Mountain in Colorado
No, I’m not comparing myself to the master. You bow to the master. On a scale of 1 to 10, he is a 14 and I am a 3. In Robin’s case, all the talk shows love it when he is to appear that night. They know they can pretty much take the night off and be prepared for a new and uncharted adventure. All the host has to do is start him off with something. Anything. It really doesn’t matter. Even Robin isn’t sure where he will go with it. Obviously, his upbringing in improv’ has served him well.
I had to do a little adjusting to the photograph I “borrowed” of Robin from the Internet. He was a little off-colour.It’s about the approach. The free spirit. No barriers. Letting it flow. I don’t think you can teach that. You either have it or you are bottling it up with something keeping it from flowing freely. Perhaps some added fibre in your diet might be in order.
There’s more than one type of fibre. The stuff we take to make the visit to The Favourite Reading Room a pleasant voyage is one. Another one is the ability to let the mind flow freely without any artificial stimulants. Fibre has substance and body and so do Robin’s thoughts.
The Big Burn in Snowmass is a wonderful adventure and surprisingly, not that difficult. I am told that it got it’s name from a substantial forest fire in the 1890’s and that’s why there are very few trees on it. For me, the trees symbolize the everyday obstacles that we let clutter our mind and make free flowing thought that much more difficult.Think of your mind as The Big Burn and imagine your thoughts as a large beach ball rolling down the hill. It can go pretty much in any direction. Add a whole bunch of trees (bills, appointments, deadlines, traffic, world economics, war) and the ball gets stuck somewhere in the trees.
The Burn also has a happy ending (at least it did when I was last there) at the end of the run high atop the mountain was a moderately sized eating establishment surrounded by picnic tables with bronzed-face, smiling skiers enjoying all types of food. Outside were a few barbecues staffed by friendly people and big barrels filled with snow that you dug into to get your ice-cold Coors. There was a party going on.
So if you think happy thoughts and you just let them flow then all you have to do is try and keep up with the pace that they are flying out at your blank page or screen. I find that most of these short posts take about a ½ hour to pen and the stuff that takes the longest is the boring stuff like proofreading and graphics editing.
If you enjoy writing, it actually isn’t that hard like most things in life that you care deeply about. Painting a picture that the reader can easily envision is the real art.
If you are a skier and haven’t been to Snowmass, what’s stopping you—too many “trees”? Go there. You’re worth it.
Nannoo nanno
Shazz-bot
