Spending a lifetime developing one idea...and making it breathe

Matisse, "The Fall of Icarus"

The artist has but one idea

he is born with it and spends a lifetime developing it

and making it breathe.

--Henri Matisse

Perhaps all of us spend a lifetime working a single idea, whether we're conscious of it or not. Perhaps the dreams and images that continually speak to us are part of that hazy idea that tugs at us when we have a pause. And perhaps working this idea, even if we are uncertain about it, is our gift to the world. Stanley Kunitz said that poets do this--poets work the same key image over and over again in their writings, and at some level, we are all artists and poets. We are all working the images that speak to us.