In Praise Of A Cluttered Mind

My brain is like a rambling old wood-panelled library crammed with a life's worth of images, references and words that have seeped in and left their mark on my soul. There's no claim to any principle of organization in this strange room of collections -- the memory of a candlelit party in Brooklyn is firmly lodged next to a favorite passage from George Eliot which, in turn, is stacked on top of a vision of a midsummer's night in Iceland -- but the haphazard arrangement of all these memories is what makes it so delightful.

Random connections proliferate.

Curious relationships form.

And every impression tattooed on my mind's eye gives me an opportunity to glimpse my world through an extra rose-colored layer of meaning.

Thus, the bracing memory of an August afternoon on a Scottish field...

(Outside Stirling, Scotland, 2008)

...inspired me to tell Luca and his friend Ethan, "So what if the badminton net is broken. Who needs a net as a divider when you have a sheep?"

(Summer, Hollywood, 2009)

The vibrant image of a suzani tablecloth paired with green curtains in an old Elle Decor...

(photograph by Simon Upton)

...prompted me to experiment with the same mix of color and pattern outside.

(September, Hollywood, 2009)

The remembrance of a favorite childhood novel in which enchanted brambles were the passageway into another world...

(Original frontispiece, The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett)

...motivated me to create an enchanted forest inside the walls of my house so that my son could feel inspired by the same imagery.

(May, 2009)

Lastly, the haunting image of two young English artists (Mark Gertler and Julian Morrell) "hard at it" in the drawing room of a country house...

(Photograph by Ottoline Morrell, 1923, via here)

...made me see the similarities between a quiet weekend in the English countryside and one in urban Hollywood nearly ninety years later.

(October, 2009)