I had an interview question concerning the influences for Fishing for Light. As I shared in the interview, I used to live in Florida, and have visited the Dali Museum several times. Over the years, I was drawn (excuse the pun) to several of Salvador Dali’s masterworks. In particular, the Ecumenical Council, the Hallucinogenic Toreador and of course, the ‘Clocks’. But I want to focus on the Ecumenical Council, I provided a link below if you want to take a look at this amazingly complex painting.
http://thedali.org/exhibits/highlights/the_ecumenical_council.php
The key issue with the painting for me was that “Dali sought to revitalize art by merging modern science with spirituality”. I was literally staring at that painting when the idea for Fishing for Light emerged inside my wacky brain. Now, it took me several years to get the manuscript written, and in a form that worked, but going back into the 1990’s, and forward that painting, and several others, kept nudging at me. They were not just colorful paint splattered on a canvass, they told a story. In a way, I was emotionally hooked.
After I published Bobby’s Socks, I felt a sense of freedom, a sensation of not being afraid. If you are going to be true to yourself, fear, is not a helpful emotion. But I promise you, if you have a passion for something, don’t be afraid. I’ll share one more of my writing influences, I have a quote under my the glass desk top, it is a quote by Henry James, from The Notebooks of Henry James. If I go all weak in the knees, and I need a booster shot to keep me going forward, I read this quote.
“I am in full possession of my accumulated resources – I have only to use them, to insist, to persist, to do something more – to do much more – than I have done. The way to do it – to affirm one’s self sur la fin – is to strike as many notes, deep, full and rapid, as one can. All life is – at my age, with all one’s artistic soul the record of it – in one’s pocket, as it were. Go on, my boy, and strike hard, have a rich and full St. Martin’s Summer. Try everything, do everything, render everything … be an artist, be distinguished, to the last.” ~Henry James.
NS
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