it's funny, and sad, and it's true...

{image: "Silence" Odilon Redon, 1911}

A recent conversation with a friend has left me pondering the difference between impressing people and inspiring them. The word "inspiration" has become hackneyed by stinky marketing, but at its base, it's a matter of *breathing into* (related, as it is, to respiration, etc... and spirit itself, if you want to keep the chain moving). Compare that to impress, which has a more rigid effect, being derived from the actual physical act of stamping a hard surface into a soft one. One is an act of filling, and the other of forcing (to some degree). In art, as with all aspects of life, these desires really do live in tension with one another. I volley them daily, hourly. The one I truly want to engage in is the breathing version. I've been impressed plenty of times by artists, but the times when I've been given new breath are the times that stay with me. Ann Hamilton inspires me. So does Anselm Kiefer...Andy Goldsworthy...Ross Bleckner...Lenore Tawney...Fra Angelico...Odilon Redon...Louise Bourgeois...to name only a quick handful of people who have pointed to something larger than themselves and have shared some oxygen with me (I also started to name friends in that list, but have realized the danger of personal blog-listing; suffice it to say that friends and contemporary acquaintances have inspired me as well as these more famous, well-established artists). Anyway, anyway. I have insomnia and was rumbling these things around.

{The title of this post is from a Kristin Hersh song that I've had in my head all day: "It's funny, and sad, and it's true: I'm aching, aching for you."}