Accidents
A few months ago, my friend Jenny sent me pictures she’d taken that afternoon while hiking in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Her pictures made me want to be out there with her, seeing the summits, creeks, paths, and skies she sees on her almost daily hikes. Jenny’s been dear to me for forty years and I love how she’s devoted to seeing as much of nature as she can.
There was one photo I liked in particular:
Jenny’s a letter-writer, so I thought I’d print-up a few cards with her picture that she could use to write future letters. My printer warned me up front that it was running out of ink, but I always assume there’s more ink in my tanks than my printer wants me to know about, so I printed anyway. This is what came out:
…an outcome I liked a lot and still do. Maybe it’s the surrealistic quality, or maybe it’s just because I generally like mauve. It’s a gentle color, an in-between color. A little pink, a little gray, a little salmon, a little white, easy on the eye. I’m aware, too, that there’s something a little unsettling about this picture, alive in a disturbing way, maybe like the sky we experienced when wildfires were raging hundreds of miles from here and filling our sky with smoke and whatever else. I wonder if the unsettled feeling I have with this version is more interesting to me than the perfect blue sky and shimmering twigs of the original. Does its eeriness suggest a more compelling story? Or do I like it so much because it was something I hadn’t expected. Whatever it was, I’m reminded how often accidents pull me in a new and often favorable direction when I’m creating something new. When one thing I like becomes two things I like.
I don’t think it’s possible to cause a creative accident to happen, but I think it’s true that the more I allow myself to change things up or experiment even a little bit, the more likely it is that an accident will happen and take me somewhere I wasn’t expecting to go.
Yes! Sometimes, nearly out of ink works in our favor. To be taken somewhere unexpectedly. I am open.
I loveboth photographs, but would rather look at the first one. THE SECONDUNSERRLED ME, BUT I KNOW WHAT YOU EAN ABOUT CHANGING THINGS UP, ESPECIALLY IN WRITING, ALTHOUGH I CAN;T MANAGE THAT. LOVELY, BAR, BOTH THE PHOTOS AND THE WRITING.