Inspiration is Like Marble Cake Batter

Childhood vision is a three-foot high perspective. Grass and ants and sidewalk cracks, bark and leaves and sand grains, mud and water and soap bubbles- that’s where inspiration springs. Minnows and clouds. Salamanders and dragons, ladders and cats. All fresh, all absorbing.
Later on, trees and bridges, trucks and towers, letters and numbers.
Chalk and poems.
Cocoa and cookies.
Fire and charcoal.
Sticks and rocks.
The temperatures and colors of sound.
Channels made in hillsides by rain flowing down.
Mica flecks in a stream.
The shape and movement of the human body.
Roll them into a tiny coil of sensory experience all living in a single wrinkle in the brain.
Around it are other little wrinkles all full of other experiences.
There they are, fully packed, highly personal little wrinkles in the brain, ready to be tapped into like ore.
All stemming from one’s particular Nature and Nurture, swirled like marble cake batter, different parts that will somehow bake together.

Inspiration depends upon the artist and is what makes art subjective.

As for execution of inspiration: It’s like getting to Carnegie Hall. First, study hard. Then practice, practice practice.