Rain, rain, rain. Blocking my view: flowers! I’m darn well going to celebrate spring indoors with all the damp outside. Plus, I spread some grass seed yesterday, so … wet is good.

Summer thoughts. And then, thoughts about my art. I just returned from a trip to Boston. It’s usually about a 2 hour drive, but traffic can make a huge difference. Suffice it to say, I had a lot of time to THINK. So I came up with ideas about my art. Definite ideas. Ideas that were over the top good.

Last night I began to implement them. I was so confident. And – well, sure enough: they were ideas. They were thoughts. So stuck. So already done. No life. My mind goes, oh crumb. This is not what I expected.

And then I flashed back to times over the years when my art had felt right, really connected . Always my mind was in the back seat. Always, it was driven by … play. Feeling my way along. Trusting intuition.

Now, what is interesting to me is just WATCHING the darn power of the mind in this mix. I had had a long talk with my online art group 2 weeks ago. Do you know, I COULD NOT recall what the take-away advice was on that a day, much less a week later? I had to go back and read my written notes. You likely can guess.

Along these lines, I do love – again, from Bob Dylan – when he is remarking on this singer that affects him deeply – a sharecropper from the South, Robert Johnson. In this piece Dylan is noticing how this songwriter can be so compelled to produce that he puts out music in the least supportive circumstances. At one point, Dylan puzzles over Johnson:

…who his audience could have been. It’s hard to imagine… plantation field hands… relating to songs like these. You have to wonder if Johnson was playing for an audience only he could see, one off in the future…

And the power of his singing is felt, yes, in the future. Who knew that what was deeply felt then would affect Bob Dylan, his music, and his listeners.

Music/art resonating through time.