Inspiring: An Art Form In Itself

Writing is a recent (by recent, I mean no more than two-three years tops..) love of mine, but it is a strong one nonetheless. Before writing, it was photography. It was awful, my photography skills. I tried very hard, and I thought I loved it very much, but I was very bad at it. Though unaware of my lack for a creative eye, I did and still do admire and appreciate the art of photography. History seems to be commonly understood through writing; textbooks, novels, autobiographies.

 Now that I think about it, photos appear to capture not just history, but they evoke ideas and creativity and opinions. Photos inspire people, photos make them remember the exceptional and the tragic. I never thought of writing as an art; when I realized that, I was amazed. Dumbfounded, really. But when I look at certain pictures, the words that come to mind, they way they weave into sentences, that's when I see the real beauty in writing.

This right here if a photo of what many believe to be the Loch Ness monster, taken sometime during the 1930s. Recognize it? Thought so. This photo of a legend has created not only a following of believers, but countless books and films have been created due to the influence of this one photo. One photo, whether it is the truth or a farce, has changed people and those changed people continue to change others. It is all one big cycle that is fueled by fiction books, stuffed Nessie plushes, and novelty shoppes that encompass all of the Loch, so people the world over are aware that there may or may not be a mysterious creature dwelling on the bottom of a lake somewhere in Ireland. Cool, huh?

On a darker side, this is a photo from the dropping of the atomic bomb in Nagasaki, Japan during World War II. The US was the first to use nuclear warfare, and this was the first time in 1945. I am not exactly sure of what scenes resonate in other peoples' minds, but I do certainly have a few in my mind.. The individuals who I have never met, nor am I sure they ever existed, flash through my head. I think of the people it saved, the lives of American soldiers, and possibly the rest of the world if power fell into the wrong hands. Then the people that died due to the explosion begin to flood my thoughts, all the people who had no idea it was coming.. 

Check this one out, it's happy. Yay for happy. People like to recreate this picture with their significant other because it is a classic symbol of love. A navy man kissing his lovely lady, how romantic. Gross, but the majority of the population is very much for public displays of affection. This and photos like it lets one get in touch with their soft side, if they have one. It's just a picture you say? Well, I bet you are just like me with my lack of understanding for the need of human contact, so it is completely fine for you to think so. 

The written word now seemed to be the most influential form of art, in my opinion. But I also believe that photography and paintings-drawing and the like, come in a close second. These pieces of art were not made to merely hang on a wall or sit in a library. They must be taken in completely by those who see the aspects that are below the surface. Those people who think and see and do. And 'those people' create others like them, believers out of the close-minded. Art is not the creations by man, but the feelings and affects of those creations on the world around them.

What inspires you, dear reader? Is it photos of people taking photos?  How about paintings of the sky with intricate colors and swirls? Your family and dear friends? Well, whatever provokes the cogs to turn within your mind, I hope it never ceases to yield beautiful thoughts to tug at your imagination. 

"There are some awful things in the world, it’s true, but there are also some great books. When I grow up I would like to write something that someone could read sitting on a bench on a day that isn’t all that warm and they could sit reading it and totally forget where they were or what time it was so that they were more inside the book than inside their own head." --Among Others by Jo Walton

Have a lovely Tuesday. (:

A News Story with Book Inspiration Potential

Jordan Dane
@JordanDane

My husband sends me strange links and records off the wall TV programs for me because he knows how I think about story inspiration. Sometimes a news story could fill out a back story of a character or become the main action or mystery behind a book. Recently he sent me this LINK. This story came from Associated Press reporter Sean Murphy. Who doesn’t love a cold case murder mystery?
 
Especially one that has a double twist.
 

Jimmy Williams, Leah Johnson, Michael Rios

 
You would think that discovering the skeletal remains of three teens (who were thought to have run away in 1970) in a rusted car at the bottom of a lake would be interesting enough. How did their car end up in the lake? Why weren’t they found until now? Rumors had run rampant. Locals speculated that the three teens had stumbled upon a drug deal at a rural airstrip and been killed with their bodies dumped, never to be found. Some folks thought the kids ran away to California, never to be heard of again. Most people who knew the kids suspected foul play, but leads went nowhere.
 
Police found a vehicle (a 1969 Camaro believed to belong to one of the missing kids) while conducting a routine diver training exercise at Foss lake, 100 miles west of Oklahoma City. Score one for the home team. But if that wasn’t enough, the over-achievers found a SECOND car, containing two to three more bodies. (Ew, that they don’t know if they have two or three bodies. That doesn’t mean poor math skills. It could mean they only have “parts.”)
 

Foss Lake outside OKC - Crime Scene

 
All the skeletal remains are likely connected to missing persons reports that are still open and unsolved. Unrelated, presumably. The teens were on their way to a high school football game and went missing in 1970. The second vehicle, thought to belong to John Albert Porter, most probably carries the remains of another man and a woman. The grandson of Porter feels certain the find solves the case of what happened to his grandfather.
 
Both cars were found submerged in twelve feet of water, fifty feet from the end of a boat ramp near the marina. I’m not sure how both vehicles would have ended up fifty feet from the end of a boat ramp. Talk about taking a wrong turn?! Lakes in Oklahoma can be filled with sediment due to the red clay soils. They would make excellent training cases for police divers, but tough for anyone looking for six missing people, apparently.
 
The bones were sent to the Medical Examiner’s office for determination of cause of death. You can’t just presume drowning, but without flesh on the bones and with all the abrasive sediment, that can’t be an easy job. If the bodies can be identified, that could give six families closure.

 
But a writer can conjure all sorts of other explanations for a story like this one. Who would’ve wanted to see the kids dead? What had they witnessed? With two cars in the lake, who was using the red dirt lake for a body dump site? Without the flesh on the bones, what if someone in the area was harvesting organs to sell on the black market?
 
So what do YOU think happened? How would you spin this emotional gut wrenching story for the two vehicles?