Dum spiro spero

While I breathe, I hope. - Latin phrase

One of the things that has been hard right now is not being very creative. I use to run with ideas like a machine gun. My thoughts would fire off and leave people breathless trying to make sense and keep up.

Now, well, my thoughts tend to run like a slow moving freight train on a very boring long straight track. I don’t miss the spaghetti bowl of ideas that made talking with me difficult sometimes, but I do miss the speed of thought and variety.

One thing I’ve decided to do is try and improve my cognitive speed. Hello YouTube, what do you have for me. It will be a while to find what might work and what is pseudoscience. But I’m hopeful that I can train my brain to think fast again.

But is there a button or some thought exercise that will bring back that excitement of a new imaginative thoughts? I use to listen to music and ideas would flood my head in a symphony of creative chaos.

Another thing I’ve started doing is sketching. Nothing impressive to show yet, but I’ve started doodling out some ideas for photos. I have a couple of night shots planned. One up in the canyon’s away from city light for when the new moon happens next week.

Another is I’m going to try and do a self portrait in our downtown area if I can get someone to go with me. Our downtown area is not as safe as it use to be and I’m uncomfortable heading out alone at night. Maybe I’ll see about going when there is an event at the location I want to shoot so people will be about.

Something else I think I’ll try to trigger inspiration is review my issues of American Cinematographer. I studied film in college and my first love is the visual language that tells a story. There are a few photographers I follow, but works by Rodger Deakins, David Finch, David Lynch, Denis Villeneuve, or Akira Kurosawa visually take my breath away. I dream of being able to create imagery in motion like theirs.

I’m not sure I’ll ever have those of creative bliss again like I use to. However, I’m hopeful that creativity is like a muscle and with use it will come back a bit. At least enough so I can serve people well and maybe have a little fun again.

As I continue to breathe, I will continue to hope.
May your creativity breathe as well.