January 21, 2020 - 130 - "New Series!: Stalkers"

Random Travel Choices

     I've always thought that Michael and I are pretty free-form travelers.  Our trips through the years have been a grab bag of locations and activities, seemingly with no particular plan. 

     We don't have a goal to visit all the battlefields of the Revolutionary War, or eat at all the restaurants in France with 3 Michelin stars, or scuba in the top ten diving locales in the world. 

      One trip we did try to get the maximum number of stamps in our National Parks Passport book, but that was only because we learned of the book after visiting several parks and not noting it.  Plus we were sort of 'in the neighborhood' of a lot of parks...we figured we should take advantage of the moment.

      We've never paid much attention to 'bucket list' destinations.  Our choices are often based on  exploring around a destination where there's an event we're invited to.  More randomly, we see a photo or video of a place n that appeals to us and say:  How 'bout there?

     Our plans have always seemed incredibly haphazard.

Name That Theme

     But, it turns out there is a theme.  In retrospect it's pretty darn dramatic and I can't believe it took half my life to notice it.

      Michael and I are:  Stalkers. 

     We've skulked around, peeking into personal quarters and private collections, both together, and separately before we met.

      The good news (?if you can call it that?) is most of our prey have been dead for a very long time before we get around to stalking them.   This is good because we avoid the nasty business of restraining orders and police line-ups.

 Who Do We Stalk? 

     We are the ultimate artist groupies.  The majority of people we've stalked are writers, but we're also into painters, poets, and even architects. 

     Most trips we find ourselves in a museum exploring a particular artist, or movement.  We've also visited artist's homes, restaurants they ate in, bars they drank in, libraries they studied at, and graveyards they, ya know...laid around in.

     I'm surprised to see in retrospect that probably a good 55% of our travels involve some sort of excursion to learn something about an artist we like. 

Stumbling Around

     Funny thing is, we rarely (almost never) plan these expeditions.  We just sort of stumble into them.

     The discovery of all this artist discovery-focused stumbling gave me the idea for a new series of posts:  "Stalking Artists".

      A lot of these posts will involve hunting down non-digitalized photos.  So we'll see how fast they get done.

     Here's to being inspired by artists and their creative journeys!

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"Often you don't know whether you're the hero of a romantic comedy or the villain on a Lifetime special until the restraining order arrives."

-Tim Kreider 

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"Artists love other artists.  Shadow artists are gravitating to their rightful tribe but cannot yet claim their birthright.  Very often audacity, not talent, makes one person an artist and another a shadow artist-hiding in the shadows, afraid to step out and expose the dream to the light, fearful that it will disintegrate to the touch."

-Julia Cameron

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"I think the very word stalking implies that you're not supposed to like it.  Otherwise, it would be called 'fluffy harmless observation time'."

-Molly Harper

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