I was talking with my mom the other day about inspiration. She’s an artist (working in clay these days – check out her blog: Burning Clay) and she told me she took a long drive back to her home town recently to soak up some of her heritage for inspiration. She grew up on a farm in Elk Grove outside Sacramento, raised by her grandparents and a gaggle of abusive uncles. Seriously, they used to beat her up and tease her all day every day. The only peace she found was when she hopped on her horse and went out on her own, and that peace was what she went back to visit. To her, the heritage that matters is the place, not the people.
She told me she found the very path she used to ride, and that it looked exactly the same. While she talked I could almost smell the long wet grasses and dusty lots in the distance. We talked further about how it seems that place, as much as the people in a given place, is what really shapes us as individuals. And as artists, what more do we really have to offer but our individual shapes?
Would I be the same writer if I grew up somewhere other than a small town in Northern California? How will growing up in LA mold the minds of my children? I shudder to think. I’m reading Barbara Kingsolver’s “Prodigal Summer” right now, and I’m pretty sure the story would be pretty different if the author grew up in India. We are part of our landscapes, but more than that, they are a part of us.
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