Creativity. The most terrifying word in any language if you have ever, even for a moment, thought of yourself as a “creative” person. All the more so if you’ve built a reputation, a living, or even just a self-image, around the very act of creation. “The production of ideas and objects that are both novel or original and worthwhile or appropriate, that is, useful, attractive, meaningful, or correct”. That’s real scary. Now, I like to think of myself as creative. Does that sound conceited? In reality, it’s more of a sense of duty. Because if I can’t create something novel and original to give back to this world, then what the heck am I doing here? How else can I repay the world for all the beauty it has given me? All the emotions and the sensations? But the endomorphin hype of that special moment when everything clicks into place, the words dance and the light sings, comes with a price. A sweeping, swirling nebula of fear that it’s all just an illusion, a con trick, that nothing new and original will ever come to you again. That’s it. Finished. Done for. The grey has won. That’s when, if you’re lucky, “inspiration” steps in. For me, wild creature that I am, inspiration is a synonym for nature. Any nature in any form… but particularly that miniscule buzzing, pulsating nature that grows, hops and flutters among the long grass and undergrowth. That’s why, however beautiful, I just can’t learn to love the sterile stillness of wintertime. Why my creativity falters and fumbles its way through the endless winter months, battling with the nagging qualm that maybe this will be the year when my creativeness will fail to sprout again in springtime. Like those first tender buds, I wait for the sun to thaw the ice and get the sap of inspiration flowing again. Here in the mountains of Italy’s Abruzzo region, it sometimes seems like a very long wait indeed.