My friend Daniel Midson Short, whom I had the great pleasure of interviewing on my podcast a year or so ago, left a comment on something I posted recently.

He told me that my persistent creativity was inspiring.

I don't know if it's a matter of persistence or inspiration so much as it is a matter of desperation and survival.

I make things because I must.

I make things because if I stop moving and if I stop making things I'll die.

I make things because I cannot find hope, and making things is the means by which I admit that I cannot find it.

I make things in the abundant lack of hope because if I cannot find hope perhaps I can make it. And if I can make hope then perhaps I can enough to give to others, and perhaps I can even make enough to have a little left over for myself.

Perhaps hope is something that has always been made. Perhaps whenever we find hope it is because it was first made by a maker of things, who in the sheer agony of her hopelessness and despair managed to make some hope. And rather than keep it for herself, she chose instead to hide it in the world, in the hopes that perhaps, in case of emergency, the hands of those who are not as skilled or adept at making hope would find it and then they would have it.

Perhaps makers have always first and foremost been makers of hope. I don't know for sure, but I hope so, and so I make things....

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