Ben,
On reflection, I’m not sure whether it was an awakening, per se, or just dumb luck. At this point, you have to ask yourself whether there’s even a difference anymore. Scout and I reprised our roles over and over again that season, scouring Mt Pleasant, looking for clues that would draw it all together.
We made a ritual out of this non-structured approach, formalising the very thing that had freed us from the confines of creation that wrapped around us like too-tight seatbelts. Unplanned planning, as it were. I started to rely on certain aspects of the journey or times of the day to yield new fruit and inspire fresh thought.
I think luck is relative. We inadvertently affect the odds with our actions, which means it’s never going to just be a flip of the old silver platypus. Follow the tail and you eventually end up at the head. It’s difficult to draw the line where inspiration starts and indecision ends; today it all came to me, fully formed without any warning. I didn’t even have to open the paint tube to see the finished canvas.
Mountains before us, mountains within us. It’s a known naivety in humanity, trying the same thing multiple times and hoping for different results, but with facts like that you always assume they’re talking about someone else. Every piece of this infuriating, all-consuming puzzle has arrived in different ways. The more I try to chase them, the more obscure they become; insects scuttling away from Scout at the summit of Mt Pleasant and disappearing beneath ageless rocks.
Perhaps it’s about being awake to the possibility of luck, the inherent randomness of things. As I write this, I’m sitting beneath a large tree that shades the entire back side of the hill. And I realise that this tree could one day become the postcard I’m scribbling on, the guitar I’m writing with, the chair on which I lean back and stare into space in the studio. Inspiration can find itself in repetition just like the rings around its trunk. Imperfect but infinite.
We are all a reprise of someone else’s songs. This just happens to be the one I think you’ll like the sound of best.
Yours,
Banff.
