Seeds continue to fascinate me not just because of what they do and are, but because I like the taste.

I just cracked a can of them tonight. Someone has made a thriving business of taking beans and cooking them to perfection with other things to create something wonderful to eat.

Beans are seeds and they’re absolutely magnificent things. They are made by bean plants according to some strict and precise code contained in the dna of the thing. The living thing. It’s as if the plant has no function more than to create the pods in which the seeds line up for nourishment and protection. Left to them selves, they dry. As far as I know, the seed expects to dry up and wait.

When conditions are correct, which the bean has mechanisms to detect, it activates. There is no going back once that process is kicked off. Before it activates, the bean can wait a long time if conditions are right.  This is fascinating stuff to me. I first began to consider it when I worked for an entymologist who explained to me how apple and snowberry flies have a similar component in their life cycles which in their case includes an incubation in a fruit, then a period of time that encompasses specific periods of heat and cold of specific ranges while in the ground. Then the fly emerges and mates and finds fruit to start the pattern for a new generation before expiring.

What’s different about beans is they can be eaten. Many seeds can be eaten. We’re gonners without them. We eat tree seeds, grass seeds, vegetable seeds, and even chicken seeds. It’s amazing. Very nutritious and often quite tasty.

I think people assume too much sometimes. There is a certain sequence of events in our lives that we don’t get. Close, but not to perfection sometimes.

We reproduce our selves using more or less the same technology that has ancient writers referring to their progeny as their seed.

There is another kind of seed that people create purposefully as well as undeliberately. A word, an action, and a sequence of events can set in motion the propagation of thoughts. We hear of people doing a kind act that acts as a seed to awaken someone to some other great thing later.

Here is where I think some people get off course. Seeds aren’t always what you think. You don’t even have to try and you can leave seeds in peoples lives that affect them later.

A bean seed is designed to recreate a bean plant that can then make more beans. Properly utilized, that is the fate of that seed. But bean seeds keep people fed. They keep people happy. I rather suspect that this duality is designed into the bean and other seeds very much deliberately.

A good seed sprouts, grows, and develops into something that creates fruit. A good seed creates good fruit.

A farmer can tell you more than you want to hear  about a seed that you place in that farmer’s palm.

My point here is that you can be deliberate about the effects you try to leave for others to benefit from but you’d be unwise and short sighted to assume what the reaction will be to the seeds you leave. You can reasonably expect certain outcomes to certain provocations, but you can’t know what machinations in other lives will benefit profoundly from your influence or how those influences will be played out.

And this brings me to David Bowie.

But before Bowie, I should do some set up so you know why I was thinking about this in the first place. I’ve thought much on this subject for a very long time.

In 2006 I embarked on the 2100 project which I assigned myself to work out some questions I needed answered. I wanted to know if I could reliably create new high quality art. I wanted to know what I was capable of in terms of meeting objectives and where my strengths and specific weaknesses were. I also wanted to get a good idea of what working methodologies I could rely on. I wondered what types of art I would go back to again and again. Those were the main points.

Along the way I discovered that the issue of inspiration was a structured energy with rules I had to abide or it would depart from me.

One of the vexing rules of inspiration has been long in the discovery stage. Other rules asserted themselves enough that I could be absolutely sure what their bounds were but this one repeatedly had me puzzled and I couldn’t figure a way around it.

It had to do with the matter of converting creative energy and talent into a living. Very important if that is how one intends to employ any talent.

What kept happening was I would assume that the specific art that gave me great joy was a side line that might please me but likely wouldn’t interest enough others to bring in sales. So I studied what else I might make or draw or paint that people would  pay for.

That was disasterous every time I tried it and I tried it again and again. Made sense to me.

But inspiration is a very powerful, very real, absolutely crucial component of the creative process for me. How it impacts others, I do not know. I’m not living their lives. I know that without it I’m toast.

I paid close attention to anything that might unravel this mystery because it seemed to me that to endow someone with talent then close down every attempt to put it in action for my benefit except for non paying attempts was cruel.

Fact: an egg (chicken seed) does not tell you that the better way to enjoy it is to get it out of the shell and cook it properly. You learn from others, who look at you funny if you suggest that this is revelation to you. Highly not recommended. Just watch and learn.

I paid particular attention to the words of a father to his sons. It’s an ancient scriptural account. He told them repeatedly that if they kept the commandments of their God diligently, then they would prosper in the land.

It occurred to me this time that I might possibly have been going at this wrong. No, it confirmed it. This changed everything. I thought of David Bowie.

To me, the fellow was a weirdo. Very unusual life style. Very unusual person. Very unusual music. He came to my attention because I liked one of his songs enough to buy it.

Imagine if David Bowie had asked him self, “What sort of music will people buy?” and made that music.

What would have happened is that we would not have had David Bowie. I suspect the same can be said for Anila Mimani, the popular singer who created one (1) and only one song that I love. It’s one of the best pieces of music I own a copy of. I don’t know what drove her to create it because it’s unlike anything else she wrote but I am so glad she did the deed. I can’t sit through anything else she has released but that I can listen to every day. Eta dish sa shume te dua. It’s albanian. Personally, I think she wrote it with me in mind. A lot of the girl singers seem to do that. Don’t hate me. Just pretend they’re thinking of you and the glory of being yours. Even if they are singing to me.

That was off the subject. If Jackson Pollock, or Pablo Picasso, or Alphonse Mucha had stuck with what they thought people would buy, we would not have had any of them. They were unique and we’re richer for it. Mostly, so were they.

Maxfield Parrish was the strange mix of talents and aptitudes that gave us Daybreak, which at one time was hanging in at least a quarter of all the homes in the country.

And I can’t imagine what would replace the unmatched work of J.C. Leyendecker .

So I read the scriptures again and concluded that the only sensible thing to do if I were going to succeed on any level as an artist is to stick with the particular sensitivities that I have that allow me to make from a spark of thought and passion a finished work. It isn’t money that teases and draws out inspiration. Money comes later, as a reward.

The promise is that if I live right, then somehow the connections may happen that brings my work and those who also love it together in such a way that they get the benefit of the inspired thing and I get the reward of joy and the benefit of compensation so I can remain in play. So if I’m to create, then I am to create what is my lot to create rather than turning the talent into a broad market commodity.

This is not to fault the practice of meeting market needs. That’s how it works for other creatives. I have to work the way I work. Just as David Bowie did.

If I do things any other way, then I won’t exist. David Bowie, I am assured, was true to his essence. If it worked for him, then absolutely it must work for me. It’s the same principle in play.

The only difference is, I’m nothing like Bowie at least in terms of flamboyance and exotic proclivity. So who would ever have guessed that his life contained the very seed of wisdom I needed?

Maybe I ought to have used Kate Bush as the example. Totally original, but not so strange. Or Kitaro.