I had written the song years before, and had only played it one time in public. I vaguely remember someone coming up to me after the service to ask if they could have a copy of the lyrics, and then promptly forgot about it. I didn't consider it to be one of my best songs, and I left it in the guitar case collecting dust. And yet, here it was years later, adopted and cared for by a church full of people that wouldn't know me from Adam (Sandler).

A ‘ripple’ effect, proof that something you’ve created has started a chain reaction (however small), is always an amazing thing to witness.

Once while driving down a city street, a colorful something magnetically grabbed my eyes and pulled me toward a storefront window. It turned out to be a promotional poster I had designed for a local art event. We sometimes wonder if our efforts will work the way we intended. The poster did to me exactly what I had designed it to do: draw attention. This was proof. It was like a gift, or like having friends say complementary things about you without knowing you can hear them.

A few years ago in Cincinnati I was leaving a favorite bookstore, purchase in hand. On the way to my car, a man and woman crossed the parking lot with their young son, who held a large blue helium balloon that bobbed up and down like a soap bubble. The balloon was caught by a sudden breeze, and leaped out of the boy’s hand and up into the sky. The boy did not cry, but just stared at the shiny blue ball as it flew over the trees and out of sight. This event lasted no more than 30 seconds. On the way home, a twenty-minute drive, I thought of a charming French movie I had seen when I was in college called The Red Balloon. It was a short, wordless film about a Parisian schoolboy whose only friend is a huge red balloon that follows him everywhere. His schoolmates become jealous of the unusual friend, and hurl rocks at the balloon, destroying it in a lonely, junk-strewn field. The boy is overcome with despair, but suddenly all the balloons of Paris gather from every circus, birthday party and street vendor, and carry the boy away with them into the sky.

At the time I had also been brooding about a bad job situation -- how it was becoming intolerable, and how much I was longing for a “pressure valve” in my life to alleviate the stress. I started humming a tune while caught in gridlock on the bridge over the Ohio River leading home, and a piece of lyric slipped in to place. I began singing it out loud. Before I reached home, I had a finished song locked in my head about the themes of escape and innocence. I recorded the song (“Red Balloon”) on an album entitled “Sleep Without Dreams” a year later. Some time after that, I produced and directed a video of the same song.

The imagery of the balloon appeared in my work again years later, in a poem entitled “Benjamin,” a description of an event that happened near my home. My next door neighbor, a divorced man living with his parents, died smashing his motorcycle head-first into a utility pole right in front of his parent’s home, leaving behind his 8-year-old son for the grandparents to raise. In the poem, the balloon (silver this time) represented a releasing of life, and his son’s constant reminder of his father’s death.

A glance at a blue balloon in an unlikely place, mixed with my memory and emotions, blended with my artistic gifts such as they are, plus an old French film with a red balloon and a tragic accident in the street near my home, somehow gave birth to a poem, a song, and a video.

In late 2005 I received an email from Armin Vit, the host-creator of the design blog Speak Up saying he had been asked for permission to use some comments I posted on their site (along with some other peoples’ comments) on the topic of music packaging. The comments were to be used in a CD for an Irish alt/folk band called Guggenheim Grotto. I went to the bands’ web site, listened to some of their music, and enjoyed it tremendously. My “Speak Up” comments became part of the DIABLOG entry, “Graphics To Dance To” (see “The Catacombs” at right to read it).

Early in 2006 I received the CD with a little red leatherette book all the way from Dublin, and sure enough, my comments were printed within.

Wonder begets wonder. I believe that when something inspires you, fills you with a sense of wonder, giving you a glimpse of an invisible world, it always seeks to replicate itself. It charges up your wonder batteries all over again. A discarded song becomes worship in a small Kentucky church. A random comment on a web site becomes an Irish band’s CD cover. A chance encounter in a bookstore parking lot produces a song, a poem, a video, and now, many years later, a blog.

You never know where ripples end up.