The Walrus
The Walrus: Why Do We Travel? To Call the Muse.
Lavinia Spalding reflects on how travel awakened her creativity and transformed the way she writes, paints, and experiences the world.
by Lavinia Spalding (google+)Last summer, I sat outside the iconic Parisian bookstore Shakespeare and Company and reached for my backpack. Across from me was the Notre-Dame Cathedral, her restoration nearly complete, and I wanted to capture the moment. While I pulled out paints, brushes, mini-palette, and sketchbook, my husband and son occupied themselves reading. They were growing accustomed to these painting interludes—even if I wasn’t. The fact that I owned and used art supplies still seemed preposterous. But travel had changed me. It has a way of doing that.
The first time this happened, I was ten, moving cross-country with my family in a refurbished school bus. I had already planned to become an author, and for years, I had filled spiral notebooks with slow, deliberate cursive. But somewhere between New Hampshire and Arizona, I started scribbling with a sudden mysterious fervour, my pencil tearing wildly across the pages.
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