Creating is a joyful, unpredictable connect-the-dots, often with periods where no dots seem to connect, and with other periods when there are more dots than expected and no idea how to connect them.

Case in point.

I’m composing songs to accompany, and I hope amplify, some paintings by Winslow Homer (and perhaps other New England painters; we’ll see).

This morning, after weeks of mulling, messing about, starting over, learning, reading, researching, and being open to new and untested ideas, I completed a very good rough draft of a song inspired by WH’s magnificent painting, “Hark! The Lark!”

What are the dots?

The first one is Homer himself. The Fogg at Harvard has been exhibiting WH’s breathtaking “Summer Night” (1890 – on loan from the Musee D’Orsay in Paris), a painting that shocked tears of awe out of me when I first viewed it last year. After that, I visited it weekly and came up with the idea of “putting it to music.”

A friend told me that the Worcester Art Museum was hosting an exhibit of WH’s work in Cullercoats, England where he lived in 1881-1882, a place that had enormous influence on his imagination, style, and evolution. While there, I came face to face with “Hark! The Lark!” More tears. (After a lifetime of those tears I recognize them as a sign that I’m in the presence of something important to my soul, so I pay attention).

I was also struck by Homer’s words about the painting: “the most important picture I ever painted, and the very best one.”

That led me to buy the wonderful exhibit book, “Coming Away: Winslow Home and England,” so that I could study the painting more carefully and to read Brandon Ruud’s essay about it.

That led me to look up the verse in Shakespeare’s play, “Cymbeline” which gave the painting its title. (And now it’s time to read this play I’ve neglected and which turns out to be about, of all things, Celtic Britain; how did I miss this???)

I was of course led to search for recordings of larksong (and I was pleased beyond measure to note that many of them begin their songs in Bflat – an important note in my composition).

It has been a fascinating game of curiosity, learning, and inspiration.

There is no predicting what dots will ask to be connected when we begin making something (or even when we undertake to live a deeply held desire). There is also no telling how long all this will take or if other people will care one whit about the thing we’ve made.

But the connecting itself – it takes some courage and tenacity but the reward is pure, unparalleled fun and the most satisfying hours on planet Earth, IMHO.

And when the dots at last connect? More tears. Of gratitude, humility, and JOY.