Preserving the joy of creativity is essential to a happy life, in my experience.  I don’t know how you nurture the creative spark inside you, though I hope you handle that spark with great tenderness.  I wish you the blessing of doing something you love that transports you, involves you completely, makes you feel grateful to be doing it. The surest way to nurture this feeling is by truly loving the things you create and everything about the process of invention and refinement that leads to their creation.  

Speaking for myself, the reverb on a note sustained on the guitar is reason enough to love that note, continue to exercise vibrato upon it, to love the notes that preceded it, the ones to follow, to enjoy their interaction with the beat.   A good cook gets to eat well, feed others well with the best ingredients perfectly combined and prepared.  The sung note, melding with the harmony of a chord, with other voices, the sound of it all, a kind of miracle.  Pick whatever you love most, and love it from time to time.  Your love may light a love in others who cannot help but be a tiny bit inspired.   The world is better for that love.

For me, late last night, finding this great, discarded Speedball C-4 nib, stuck in an old cork handled nib holder I’ve had for years, dipping it in ink and bringing it down toward a nice piece of drawing paper, with a low-medium tooth, made me excited to drag the ink across the page.   That thrill on contact, to see what a succulent line it was, was enough to make me wonder, did I actually have anything to write in my best flowing hand?  

It was no matter, just as much fun to draw the knife, pen the word ‘anodyne’ on its handle.  I thought how nice it would be to hand write the short note for the short Book Jacket copy I’m going to send to one of my oldest friends tonight.  

She would immediately wonder why the hell I’ve drawn folding knives, Opinels by the looks of ’em, all over my note explaining what the enclosed page was.   I answered that question as best I could, alongside the knives, and while I dipped the pen and wrote that answer I had no wonder about what to write to keep the pleasure of using this lovely nib going.  A pleasure on top of a pleasure.   Pretty good, in the scheme of things.