What's Inspiring You Lately?

"The possibility and promise of those moments..."

We have a bunch of new subscribers, so let me explain how this works. Every three months, I send out a question to each of our contributors and then I publish all their replies in one big smorgasbord. The last one was What are you dreaming lately? in July. This time the question is, “What’s inspiring you lately?”

I deliberately choose an open-ended question each time, hoping that it’ll bounce off in a few different directions throughout the responses. And (as always) our contributors rose to the occasion.

When you’ve read them all, leave your own response in the comments! What’s inspiring you lately?

I’ll start.

Tonya Morton:

I could just write, “read everybody below.” Lately, I am so inspired by our contributors. I am continually impressed by their willingness to play in different creative genres—poetry, fiction, music, film. And I love their spirit of collaboration. Just this week, we published And the Day Ends… by painter Tabby Ivy and poet Fran Gardner. They had never worked together before, but they discovered each other on Juke (and realized they lived near each other) and a lovely new work has come from it. Tabby has also worked with Damon Falke (pick up Between Artists if you haven’t yet) and Damon has worked extensively with Charlie Pepiton and Rebekah Wilkins-Pepiton. Ned Mudd has provided music for Matt Layne’s poetry, and Paul Vlachos and I regularly work on projects together. If there’s one thing I love the most about Juke, it’s those collaborations. I hope, more than anything, to keep fanning that spark.  

Otherwise, I am inspired by: barrels of fresh apples in the greenmarkets, The Miracle of Mindfulness by Thich Nhat Hanh, the new fluffiness of squirrels and fat-bellied little birds as they prepare for winter, the invigorating winds blowing off the river, and the early sunsets. The colder, darker evenings are ideal for shooting photos, so Paul and I have been driving out into the city (and sometimes New Jersey) with our cameras…

The fall always feels like a beginning to me, more so than January, and I am resolving to be present for all the little changes, to appreciate all the lovely details around me and not let my mind swim off so often into the muddle of thoughts and anxieties. There will be time enough for thinking once it’s icy cold. For now, more apples… 

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Damon Falke:

Presently, I am writing this note while on a plane from Spokane, Washington, to Minneapolis, Minnesota. Later tonight, I will catch a flight to Syracuse, New York. Fall arrived two days ago. The season arrived while I was walking in a neighborhood with my dear friends Charlie and Rebekah Pepiton, and their young son, my partner in occasional domestic chaos, Wren. We had been walking in the neighborhood every evening for the past two weeks. On this evening, however, we saw that the leaves had changed on the maple trees. We pointed out the trees for each other. We named them. A good number of the chestnut trees had started to wane, from summer green into a spectrum of chartreuse. The honey locust trees had all gone yellow, and a fair number of them had gone bare. Back on the streets, there were Halloween decorations on the porches and doors of the neighborhood homes—spider webs of cotton, carved pumpkins, skeletons of various species, and dolls. The dolls had been hung from porch columns and stuffed between the pickets of fence lines. They were baby dolls. They were bald with puckered faces, with open and half-closed blue eyes. Charlie told me the dolls come from an Albanian tradition called dordolec, which translates into something like a stuffed human form. Think of a scarecrow. Think of a doll. The Albanians use the dordolec to ward away those who might be envious. We wondered about that. Then we walked on. The air smelled like most of us imagine autumn to smell like, ameliorated with evening and trees, white lights and decorations, the smell of pizza and warm food from a local tavern, someone lighting an early woodfire. For two weeks, Charlie, Rebekah and I had worked together. We had planned projects and celebrated a staged reading of a new play and shared food and drinks and dreamed and made what we make together. That evening walk, with autumn returning to the world, felt like grace, felt like we had accomplished something, felt like the assurance of knowing the way and because we know the way, we don’t have to worry about being lost. Autumn is like this. There are old stories that tell us spirits and people nearly touch this time of year, and sometimes we can sense their breathing.         

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Paul Vlachos:

It’s a big, broad topic - “what’s inspiring me?” Inspires my day-to-day consciousness? My writing, my photography? My human interactions? I like to think about this topic. It’s a positive avenue for reflection.

As always, the etymology leads me to interesting thoughts. From www.etymonline.com comes this:

mid-14c., enspiren, "to fill (the mind, heart, etc., with grace, etc.);" also "to prompt or induce (someone to do something)," from Old French enspirer (13c.), from Latin inspirare "blow into, breathe upon," figuratively "inspire, excite, inflame," from in- "in" (from PIE root *en "in") + spirare "to breathe" (see spirit (n.)

So, what IS filling my heart with grace and breathing life into my soul?

When I look into my dog’s face and skritch his belly, it fills me up. I derive joy from my interactions with my significant other and my friends, who remind me that not all humans are rotten.

An early Autumn wind fills me with awe and a sense of mystery. I suddenly realize that this could be a long piece, so I’m hoping we can revisit this subject again in a future column.

As for my writing, I’ll say this - I’m re-reading Dashiell Hammett’s complete works and that’s inspiring me. Music? Sun Ra, Coltrane, Prince, Mozart, you name it. Whatever is on shuffle at the moment is stirring me up.

And New York City, that big cauldron of a mess that I live in - that feeds my soul, as well. It’s like a great boiler that never stops. Of course nobody wants to live around a boiler all the time, which is why I like to travel. And few things inspire me as much as the road, which gets me out of my daily shuffle. I could go on about the inspirational qualities of pizza, but you might stop reading at that point, so I’ll just stop here.

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Sue Cauhape:

October has been a scary month for my family in the past. The economic crashes, the news stories that gave me nightmares, summer activities and intense beauty of fall that dissolve into bleak November, the seasonal goblins and ghouls … all these things that impacted us directly are inspiring me to write a post called "The Horrors of October." This year, the real horror that consumes my thoughts is the election and the frightening incidents of my husband's rage when I criticize one of the candidates. He's always been right of center, but this year's emotional outbursts reveal a scarier aspect of his political beliefs. He apparently wasn't raised with stories of Germany's crimes against humanity and the Holocaust. The prospect that America is spiraling toward that same regime terrifies me in the extreme. What's more, I'm the only one in my family who is voting for the "socialist." Having lived in a kibbutz and seeing a model of that system and how it works within the capitalist economy alleviates the fear that so paralysizes so many of my associates. As the flags and placards blanket my neighborhood and a nearby desert shooting range rings with the sound of AKs and 9MMs, I know this October will be the scariest of all.

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Matt Layne:

I have been participating in a daily prompt exercise with the poet, Miriam Calleja: https://miriamcalleja.com/

I am not a daily poem writer by any stretch of my imagination, so this has been a great exercise to get me writing and creating more. I'm so thankful for all of the people in the world who prod us into being our better selves. 

Here's one of the pieces from earlier this month:

Something Wicked This Way Comes

Melancholy mixes with magic as the days deepen and winter-cold 
tramps toward us, inevitable as a door to door lightning-rod salesman.

Soon willful children will crunch through autumn leaves
and shops will turn all the world to pumpkin spice.

The fair is already advertised on highway billboards, 
but there is little chance it will be a Bradburyian affair:

no Cooger & Dark's Pandemonium Shadow Show.
Perhaps I’ll see you in the House of Mirrors.

Maybe we can share a few bites of “the world’s best corndog”,
but will we be whisked back to our childhood selves 

while a classic carousel whirls widdershins
for the cost of three red tickets and our souls? 

I have my doubts.

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Anthony Head:

The painted churches of Texas are inspiring me like a thunderbolt from Zeus. Painted churches feature a certain charmingly antiquated and often strikingly executed interior ornamentation. The walls and ceilings and other surfaces become canvases for religious and decorative imagery.

My buddy Kirk Weddle and I have spent about four years traveling Texas to visit and photograph many of these historic and rare churches. We’ve also documented their histories and their beauty is only the start of what makes them so captivating. 

We’ll be showcasing some of our favorites in our upcoming book, Inside the Painted Churches of Texas. There’s no publication date as of this writing because the dern thing is still being written. However, this is the view from my desk that inspires me every moment I’m working. It’s like the last thing I’m seeing as Zeus’s brilliantly shimmering technicolor thunderbolt blows my mind.

photo by Anthony Head

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Tabby Ivy:

It’s not so much what’s inspiring me, as what I am looking forward to. Inspiration cannot be forced, it comes in the quiet moments of our daily lives, and I haven’t had many quiet moments lately.

This should all change by the end of November. Then it will be time for slowing down; reading a book, driving to the coast, and walks in the beauty of autumn in the Pacific Northwest. Most of all, I am looking forward to quality studio time during the quiet, albeit wet months of the Oregon winter.

I envision finally having a clear mind, relaxed heart, and time to ponder new paintings and how I will approach them; calmly, but with excitement and anticipation for what is possible.

My paintings usually start with a photograph I have taken in my travels along backroads. I have a vast collection of photos taken over the years, and now the Oregon landscape calls to me. Inspiration for a painting can start when something tells me to stop and pay attention to the moment before me; a line of trees, the mist on a fallow field that blurs the distant hills. Standing water and the reflections upon it intrigues me. With the surface like a mirror, the reflected landscape can become an abstraction by the gentlest of breezes. The resulting painting can lean toward abstract, but is grounded by a hint of the familiar. Some of my favorite paintings have been inspired by reflections, and are among the most fun to do.

The best is when the unplanned happens - the serendipity of a spontaneous unconscious gesture that jump-starts a painting in the right direction. The way becomes clear and I can let instinct guide me into the painting. I look forward to those magical moments when the painting opens up to me, lets me in, trusting me with its creation.  

The possibility and promise of those moments is what’s inspiring me lately. 

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Fran Gardner:

Inspiration

What moves us, inspires us?
Is it things others do?
Words piled upon words,
Ideas polished and honed.

Some look to nature,
So loudly quiet,
Wind, water and rustle
Of our feet on the trail.

Or find it in doing,
Creating, cooking,
Birthing a child
Or raising one up.

The essence of others,
Great minds that move us,
Wisdom of ages
Or of our own moms.

How can I ever know
What really inspires me?
It’s wrapped in the Spirit
That moves through my being.

Inspiration comes,
Inspiration stays,
Inspiration leaves,
But only when I say it can,
Only when I’m done.

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Ned Mudd:

Zoë Schlanger’s “The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth”

Barry M. Andrews’ “The Gospel According to This Moment: The Spiritual Message of Henry David Thoreau”

José Andrés and the World Central Kitchen

Acorn squash, Japanese sweet potatoes.

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Charlie Pepiton:

Over the last two weeks the core Square Top Theatre team was together for a residency at Gonzaga University. Damon, Beka, and I have been working together steadily since 2008, if you can believe it. The three of us, alongside a steady ensemble of co-conspirators, have been making theatre, film, and art installations for nearly 16 years. We're developing new projects. Scheming, we say. On Wednesday, we produced a stage reading of Damon's latest play An Evening with Frank Legend at the Jundt Art Museum. The play considers why we create art, what we might expect from art and artists, and whether the risks to create art are at all worth the costs. The play is beautifully agitating. It stirs an audience, not letting anyone off easily. We have a new movie in the works, Love, Eleanor.—our first narrative film—that will take us back to Greece. A young art historian arrives on an island in the Saronic Gulf to document local icons but soon finds herself questioning what it means to love. And then, the earliest perculations for a new documentary are just starting to churn. Light. Stories redolent of landscapes. Working titles that may only hint at form and focus. 

Somehow, when we get together, time moves differently. Some days the conversation that ebbed the night before at 11 will pick up without a hitch over coffee at 6 and move straight on through the day. The energy starts to roll early and doesn't really stop except for brief periods of necessary unconsciousness. I feel expended and fueled. It's curious how an idea begins, how it seethes, moves, grows, or slows. The best ideas don't move in direct lines, nor can they be forced into being. It is a ferment of trust and time.

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Rebekah Wilkins-Pepiton:

I am delighted by the black birds gathering in the Ponderosa pines, chattering, flying low before landing on the neighbor’s fence. I am at the same time drawn in by Orthodox icons in preparation for a film project this April. I am also returning to a children's book illustration project in order to transform it into a gallery show for May 2025.

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Patrick McCarty:

October 11, 2024

Inside my mind is a sprawling, nearly infinite catacomb of passageways and rooms, each filled to overflowing with images, memories, thoughts, ideas, observations, and connections. Some areas hold partially assembled meanings, points of view with murky origins and chunks of stories- both based in truth and based in something else. The catacombs are loud, messy, smelly, chaotic. I did not like the catacombs. They did not make me feel well. Throughout the first part of my life, I learned to search them for things I could use to navigate a world I found baffling and cruel. This is how I survived and functioned into my middle years. The catacombs sat like a weight on my shoulders, looming behind every thought, every action and every feeling. Then one day, and it took a whole day, I realized everything had stopped. A massive, deafening silence ached in place of the cacophony.

I could wander alone through those hallways and rooms and examine everything they contained, as if I was experiencing those things outside of my mind, in what, I suppose, is the physical world. At first, I wandered aimlessly in and out of memories and dreams feeling darkness and light, despair and hope, joy and anger and shame and pleasure and every feeling a human being can feel, as immediate and real as a toothache or a morning cup of coffee. All these sensations invariably turned to suffering, as with each individual experience, these things were nothing at all. They only existed inside of me, and nowhere else in the universe.

I moved through the course of a year, at first wandering aimlessly, then intentionally. As the months passed, I came to understand that I was no longer wandering but being led, by a guide provided by my own mind, to show me the way through and then out of the catacombs to whatever lay beyond. As dates on the calendar came and went, memories, visions and sensations presented themselves in order, to be experienced individually. And as they came, I examined them in my own time with increasing strength and comprehension. I assembled, reassembled, exploded and rebuilt my own narratives from these artifacts until I understood something.

All of these things are in my mind – in me. But I exist alongside, intertwined with and yet, ultimately separate from them. They do not control me. They do not overwhelm, terrify, dampen or drown out what I am. Neither do I control them. They, and I, simply “are.” I exist. I understand that I exist. And the understanding of the fact of my existence is what inspires me.

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Jodie Meyn

I spent a long time thinking about whether inspiration has to inspire creativity. Artistically, have I done much lately? No. But I’m inspired by any teenager who doesn’t shut me down when I’m preaching literature. If inspiration is output, then I’m inspired by the weather to make soup. But if inspiration is learning, then I’ll have to give this one to Grandma. 

Grandma Joyce is 92 and giving me weekly quilting lessons. The lessons are both practical and allegorical.  For example, I have learned that using the scraps of life’s projects can produce the prettiest things (allegorical), that it’s always good to have a mug of sharpened pencils nearby (practical). And I now put my scissors back where they belong every time so that I don’t spend so much time looking for my scissors in the first place (a little of both).  She inspires me to enjoy change, accept loss and expect human error (quilting be hard).  I try to write down some of the stories she tells as we go but I think what you need to know is this: be like Grandma who uses her brain, accepts all her people, laughs at what is ridiculous and who states without equivocation that the meanest bully on the playground shouldn’t be in charge of anything. 

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