“where do your ideas come from?”

An insight into my mind through ways of seeing, inspiration, things i want to explore more, ways i make connection and permission.

One queston i get asked a lot is,

“where do your ideas come from?”

And each time I check which version I should tell.

Because without realizing it, it’s a big queston, and one that delves between layers and sometimes, my process sounds like I’d frantic or a mess.

Non of this is linear.

I’ll tell you that it comes from books, and blog posts, or from walking in landscapes. But ideas are inconvenient in timing. they come when i’m half way through putting up the laundry. Driving is often a good landing pad for an idea. Or when one thought piggy banks onto another, like a over-ripe plum + fennel fronds in the garden + medieval tapestries or handmade patchwork blankets + a coffee stain. 🤷‍♀️

Which I think would leave people like they’ve just gone down the helter skelter on someone else’s potato sack.

My phone is full of photos and screenshots and notes that I’ll say I’ll go back to and add meat to later (Like, meat and potato, or meat on the bone (add your own catchphrase here)).

Or, that I’ll definitely remember the relations between lichen growing on the fence, and the buttery softness of morning light in June and the cloud covered puddles. And how that would make incredible textures on a plate. It’s obvious, I tell myself, in the midst of no organisation.

There’s folders on my laptop and hard drives called “puzzle me this” or “desktop 2013” of little pictorial notes I’ve left myself every year since 2012.

Make it stand out

Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

And here it is friends, part of the creative process. It’s a lot of, “It’ll come in handy as some point”. Like that tin of buttons your gran used to keep. You know, none of them where the same, but she knew they would be useful one day.

The beginning inklings of ideas feels like this, fragments that i cant put into words, but will combine to create something from a different perspective later down the line.

textures, colours, feelings, changes in light, phrases, tv references, a herb mix, a outfit choice, a quote in a book about a character’s sensation, or learning about the healing properties of a herb and how that could all become an evening spent planning the next event.

One skill that I learnt in Art School was about paying attention and questioning. It was a process of digesting information, both cognivitely and philopshically, but mainly sensorially and through chosen filters.

And it’s not a practice that I say I do naturally anymore. I wonder if this type of paying attention through your being and your senses, your intellect and your curiousity is somehow suspicious? Like strong eye contact? Everything currently is about being productive. Everything must have a reason to get the the next stage.

Hear me out.

Walking is now about clearing your head.

Reading has to teach you something

A hobby or a side hustle? Monetise.

Even a nap / an afternoon rest is about optimising.

I also get sucked up in this thought pattern. I also feel frantic, and numb and overconsuming and overworked.

A friend of mine who is a parent, shared with me, which was sweet reminders, of how their kids fill their pockets with sea glass and rocks. for no practical reason other than they are nice and could be keep sakes.

Or they watch ants carry crumbs 3x their size. Okay, that one wasn’t a friend sharing a story of her child, that was me as a child.

Kids’ eyes are full of awe and wonder, and pure delight at the world. They collect things and moments for that and that only, not for productivity or optimisation.

BTS of what my Altar consists of. A space I come to outpour and to gain insight/input.

A playlist I come back to when i wanna ride the waves.

The funny thing is, all of these will inspire something.

The shadow cast across a greenhouse wall somehow ends up influencing how I plate roasted peaches.

I realise how ridiculous that sounds written down.

Or maybe when someone asks me, “where do your ideas come from?”, I can reply with: it’s like a pile of compost.

ou keep adding little bits here and there, ends of this, and a smell, or a colour of a conversation. and nothing is really happening.

But you trust.

And after a while, or trusting, something matures in it, you use it in situ and even though you cant remember where it’s from, something from it grows.

Before you go!

What if you looked at this current moment as you, picking up keeps sakes like a kid picking up rocks?

An overhead conversation, or colour of the sky at 9:30pm. It doesn’t have to mean anything right now, other than it’s interesting or gives you a feeling.

With eyes of curiosity, and using all your senses to explore, I have no doubt about it, that’ll you’ll make some damn fine rich compost for something new to grow from.

Many Blessings,

Aimee