To say that the last few months of my life have been devoid of inspiration would be an understatement.
I put down my camera around February and have barely touched it up until recently. I've been using my mom's old Minolta 35mm, though, and I have been pretty pleased with it. But the bond with my camera, and, more importantly, photography, has been pretty much severed.
I'm not typically one who talks about "inspiration" or losing and gaining it. I kind of thought of hobbies, talent, and passion as three separate things. Any photographic skills I posses have nothing to do with passion or "expressing" myself. Or, that's what I used to think.
I've been trying to re-build my relationship with my passions and hobbies. I did a photoshoot for a family on Sunday, and it went really well. I've been lugging my camera around everywhere with me again. I've been seeing moments as photographs again.
I've even been playing music again. I never really stopped playing my cello, though, admittedly it was mostly out of guilt knowing my parents are paying a monthly bill for me to keep it.
I found the sheet music to one of my soul songs a few days ago, and I've been working on it with the piano. It's difficult; it will take me a long time to master. The point is, I'm motivated to play it. I long for those notes to come out of my fingers, not just into my ears.
I've been wanting to paint very badly, as well. I haven't really had time to, but the important thing is that I want to. I want to create, even if to other people (and usually to myself as well), it's just blobs of pain on a canvas.
It's like I'm crawling back to an ex or something. I feel like I'm asking forgiveness from music, art, and books. Forgiveness for leaving; forgiveness for closing myself off emotionally from even them. I know I sound crazy. But I have a relationship with these things.
It's such a sweet release. Putting my finger to the trigger of my camera, having the knowledge that I know all it's nooks and crannies - I know it better than I know myself, it seems. It's an old part of my soul that, for some reason, I let go of several months back.
I feel as though having these things in my life restores some sort of normalcy. As I'm coming to re-know myself (another thing I don't usually believe in - the idea of 'knowing' or 'finding' oneself), I'm allowing these things to be in my life again.
I haven't come so far as to write music anymore. I don't know if I ever will again. But it's slowly seeping back into my soul, on the wings of winter, it seems. The blood of strangers that's been flowing in my veins for awhile now is being replaced with my own blood - the familiar warmth of myself.
