I am not dead yet, and a Liebster Award

Sorry for dropping off the map. I still have many posts I want to form for you, and many things others have posted that I want to read, but I may still be quite slow in catching up. Life = crazy at present.

Until I can get my act together, I will gladly accept the prompts of Evan, who has nominated me for Liebster Award. If you have forgotten what that is, see here. I will not nominate anyone new today because my brain is mush. But thank you, Evan!

1. What is it that inspires you to practice your art?
   It’s hard to put into words. Sights and sounds, but more than that. Thoughts and paths of reasoning, but more than that. I write and I sculpt because there isn’t a way to capture or communicate these things and art and writing are as near as I can come to doing so.
2. What is the one story or image you long to capture above all others?
   …you’re kidding me, right? The closest I can come to answering this one is to say that there is a feeling, or a series of feelings, that cannot be captured, as mentioned above, but I’d like to come close. As far as writing is concerned, I’ll just be content if I can open a window for others to see some of what I see. All the books I really love make me feel like I am looking through the window of another person.
3. If you were able to choose your last words right this second, what would they be?
   Wishful thinking, or what I would actually say if I died right now, because I imagine there’d be a few expletives in the latter. How about “Run, you fools!”
4. You have to choose one song, right now, to listen to for the rest of your life. What is it?
   In all honesty, I’d rather have none at all, because one song for a lifetime would get reaaaaaaaaally annoying after, at most, 50 listenings. It would have to be something instrumental, to lessen the sheer irritation. How about Bear McCreary’s theme for the Battlestar Galactica/Admiral Adama? Or, better yet, Roslin and Adama’s theme. It is a beautiful piece of music and, while shorter in some respects, has more variety in it.
   Here:
5. Where do you want your work to take you?
   My job-work? Creative work? Yard work? I hope my job continues to pay the bills and be relatively enjoyable and fulfilling. It had better not try and make me move, either.  My creative work takes me lots of places, but I don’t see it as a vehicle, if that makes sense. I hope my yard work takes me on the path of having a great yard with lots of wildlife.
6. In your opinion, what is the purest form of creative expression?
   You are making the Art History major in me militant. There is no “form” that is pure in that way. What is pure creative expression depends on the person, not the medium. ;)
7. Wh0, in your tangible life, has influenced your path in writing the most? You don’t have to name names if you don’t want to.
   Probably my brother, from his own creative story-telling gift. He started telling me stories when I was a tyke and never stopped.
8. Same question, except rather than just with writing, your entire life.
   So, Evan, how long did it take you to eliminate the only-sort-of-impossible questions until you had those perfect ten unanswerable ones? ;)
9. You can spend the rest of your life in your dream location. Where is it?
   In this reality? The Smokey Mountains. In any reality? I’d like to try Middle Earth at certain periods and places too numerous to be easily named.
10. Why is it that you do what you do, both in your art and in your life? Why do you keep going in the face of more immediate gratification, rather than just give in?
    There are a lot of things, from my family, to the beauty I see in the world and a few solid friends, but the linchpin is my faith. When that linchpin is removed, as it once was, the only hope I see for the universe, myself, or others, dies and all motivation within me dies with it.