"A Bird does not sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song."

It never occurred to me to blog about my experiences with needle felted wool sculpture originally, because I had no idea that it was going to be a  journey worth documenting.  But I did buy a journal to jot down ideas in.  I chose it because I liked the cover.  When I got home I noticed a little peal-off sticker on the plastic wrap that said "A bird does not sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song."

I hadn't had a "song to sing" in a long time when I was introduced to felting needles.  I was a writer with nothing to say, a guitarist with nothing left to play.  I had been trying to revive myself, to get rid of that "dead inside" feeling through yoga, meditation and other techniques and was in a healthy place in many ways, but my neglected creative self remained stagnant.

The first time I had a felting needle in my hand was at my and aunt and uncle's art studio in Santa Cruz, and with nothing but a few pointers, I found myself in that creative state that is sort of like self-hypnosis--the kind of state I used to be able to enter while writing poetry or playing guitar.  With no conscious intent I first made a sloppy, poorly felted mushroom, and then an "alien wizard" or shaman which looked kind of neat, but was so loosely constructed it barely holds together. 

I bought wool and tools for myself and doodled around a little with these "ideas" of what I thought I wanted to do. . . things I thought other people might like or want.  And then a trip to Chile helped spark a transformation in the way I approached wool art.  That's a story for another post, but it took me back to my very first felting experience, and made that little Alien Shaman meaningful, because in a way it was a sign post to the path I would end up on, to the place where art and magic intersect.