ReFueling Inspiration

As always, and especially with personal non-profit projects like Caravan, I think keeping one's self inspired and perpetuating the feeling of continued growth and creativity through a project is key to keeping on track and maintaining a love for the work beyond simple determination and elbow grease. In the spirit of continuing to fuel my inspiration with Caravan, yet another portion of my time in recent weeks has been spent taking another dive into discovering and collecting new nuggets of inspiration. I've been photo-taking, camping, browsing the net, and low and behold, the exercises in sparking little bits of intrigue here and there are paying off, and helping me maintain - and oftentimes refuel - my ambitions.

The current view, shotgun, from the family RV.

Campfire and wind-chimes at the current campsite.

The above photos were both captured at whim fairly recently from my parents' current campsite. Staying with them at any length is a perpetual, peaceful, very wonderful way to re-ignite my love for this project. I'll undoubtedly be hopping on over to visit them frequently throughout the summer - always a wonderful prospect.

Music, as always, and as I think is pretty readily apparent throughout this blog so far, is another huge source of inspiration for me artistically. My buddy Kate recently introduced me to the Black Rebel Motorcycle Gang. Apart from being rather entertaining tunes in general, a number of their songs have now ended up on my Caravan-inspiration playlist on itunes. Here's one of said songs:

	Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - Ain't No Easy Way .mp3
	Found at bee mp3 search engine

Just today, actually, I found the footage below on YouTube, and I absolutely love it; European-based Romany travelers, filmed in the early 1960's. Now granted, my little fictional group of travelers in Caravan are both American-based and geared more towards the late 60's, early 70's, but I couldn't help but be struck by the beauty of this little film and its relevancy visually to my own inspiration - people persevering through an undoubtedly difficult lifestyle.


More again soon,
♥Mel