It Needs A Faucet

When Jessica was here we made cards together. Well, separately, but we were in the same room, grooving to the same music, listening to each other ink stamps, tap them against paper, and sigh with either exasperation or contentment.

At one point Jess got up from her chair to look at what I was doing. I showed her the above card that I had just completed.

"Huh," she said. "I like it."

I shrugged, and as if to explain the inexplicable (which, as it happened, wasn't even in question), said, "Well. I don't know why... but it just needed a faucet."

As matter-of-factly as if I had told her that apples are delicious, Jessica nodded and agreed that, "Indeed. Some things just need a faucet."

And that's one of the things I love about Jessica - her perspective. She doesn't question my much abused artistic license. To her, a faucet hanging above a love seat while the Tweedle Twins look on is absolutely normal. Standard, in fact. We decided that "it needs a faucet" would become the catch phrase when we were feeling artistically stuck.

Why? Because that's how creative thinkers roll. We're often accused of being dreamers - as if the word dreamer is a pejorative used to describe someone who has no ambition. Fie! But, I get it, dreaming does imply a rather passive state. So, I prefer to say that we're Imaginers or Creatives. If we're stuck in the bottom of a pit, we'll imagine a faucet, flood the pit and float to the top.

I don't know about you, but I need the far-fetched to bring me back to real. After all, haven't some of the greatest inventions and ideas come from those who think up the impossible and/or improbable? You can bet those folks had an interloping faucet or two.

My life would be very boring if all I saw was the world exactly as it is. I like to fill in the gaps. I don't like blank spots. I'm one of those people who sits at the airport or in a restaurant and makes up a whole fictitious life for the stranger across the room. I like things that are juxtaposed against each other in an unlikely fashion.

I like a faucet in the middle of nowhere for no good reason. Because that kind of thing is a curiosity, and curiosities lead to imaginings, and imaginings lead to creativity, and creativity leads to doing, building, making. And that is never boring. That's what keeps us alive.

That's what keeps things real.