kingtycoon | #17 Won By Effort

#19 the Transformation. This one kind of took something out of me.

I struggled. First with subject - here's my first attempt:

This was the first time I couldn't make something out of nothing since I've begun this project. I was pretty frustrated, blocked even.

I reached back and thought about where I was when started. Here:

My living room. I was pacing furiously, I was thinking, my kiddo was playing around or doing something on her own, watching a show maybe. And I was bored, I was bored of being shut up and broke and not having much to do. And it came to me - the idea of the Salesman - I just painted it and I was happy. I worked on pictures for about a week after that, one a day. No trouble at all. Easy, flowing. I was inspired you see. I had inspiration. I can't say - It came from this, or it came from that. I can't say where or what inspired me, if someone knows this about how their mind and processes work - if someone knows, I envy that person. So I tried to recapitulate that inspiration.

The external faded, the internal the self - exploding, defined. This is a poor depiction of inspiration, that the focus shifts, that the world fades. That is a fair way of looking at inspiration. That's a fair appreciation of what it is like to be inspired.

But it isn't right, it isn't iconic or valid, not for my purposes. I needed something else.

Because you see, I'm working on #17 - the Star. The Star follows the Tower - it rises in the night sky after the ruinous destruction by fire and lightning. So I need an image, something to depict what comes after ruin. What inspires and inward looking, a new identity - or a new paradigm to view the world through, to interact with. This is the journey you see. We start with Competition - entering into the world - the Arena of the world. Then journey to Concentration, pulling oneself together, inward, concentrating the whole self to the task of the Arena. From there to the Fall -the accident, the failure that comes from trying. Then the Sunset - the end of the day, the world's ending, the transformation from the anticipated to the actual, an understanding that what begins ends, but that an ending allows new things to go forward. The sun sets, we fall to sleep, and then we Wake - Waking comes next and Waking is the new and dawning sense of the Arena, what it is - there has been experience and now we loose a sense of agency, we wake to that. Then are daunted by the Wolves, the engine of the Arena, which drives the competition, that demands concentration, that punishes a fall, that comes out after the sunset, that rouses you from dreams. The cold-hard facts of reality - that's this second pass through the major Arcana - 10-18. The hard truths about Ruin and Destruction and what their role is in the world and in your life.

And then there is how we leave it. The Star stands for inspiration, and guidance down a more enlightened path. Now of Inspiration I can speak at length, but I think no one alive can tell you about the Muses and how to call them. We only know when they're riding us. That's all. Where does the inspiration come from. Why did I think to do this- what I am doing? I don't know.

But now it is a thing I do. I paint these and I am changed- by the act of doing this, by talking about it here, by making something new. By thinking of it. I am changed. Inspiration is the blinding light on the road to Damascus, the transforming light that remakes us, guides us to a better life.

It's not by accident that it follows Ruin - Ruin is the defeat that seems a defeat, that seems to be an end. But it is not, not remotely an end. It is from Ruin that we can adapt into a new strategy, a new perception - we understand the ephemeral then and are found looking for the permanent and are nearly lost without it. But when the important things prove to be immaterial and when immateriality is all that is - when everything is not anything - then we're inspired to a new course. An inward, generative, creative, let us say - spiritual course. This is what is meant by Transformation.

So I had some trouble trying to make an image of that transformation, the one that comes of an altered identity and perception. And I finally came to this. The blank page. Nothing demands attention quite so much as an empty notebook. It begs to be remade. From a single idea, the idea of ordered space useful for a purpose - to an entirely new thing. A blank notebook - it becomes whatever you put in it. A book, a recipe, a map, a list, an angry letter, a poem. It is what you transform it into. Just as you are whatever your inspiration transforms you into.