{"id":1506,"date":"2026-03-29T17:38:31","date_gmt":"2026-03-30T00:38:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alessandrob.com\/blog\/?p=1506"},"modified":"2026-03-29T21:09:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-30T04:09:09","slug":"inspiration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alessandrob.com\/blog\/?p=1506","title":{"rendered":"Inspiration"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"p3\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-1505\" src=\"https:\/\/alessandrob.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/AA_Baktyar_031-201x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"201\" height=\"300\" data-kale-share-title=\"Inspiration\" data-kale-share-url=\"https:\/\/alessandrob.com\/blog\/?p=1506\" srcset=\"https:\/\/alessandrob.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/AA_Baktyar_031-201x300.jpg 201w, https:\/\/alessandrob.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/AA_Baktyar_031-685x1024.jpg 685w, https:\/\/alessandrob.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/AA_Baktyar_031.jpg 700w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 201px) 100vw, 201px\" \/>My \u201cinspirations\u201d come in pictures. I \u2018see\u2019 a scene. This is when the story opens up for me. Maybe because the first artistic thing I ever did was photography.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\">I had gone to photograph San Marco and the Rialto and ended up seeing homeless already out at that unGodly hour, some passed out drunk, some, like this gentleman, barefooted, wearing a suit, sober and at his place of business at 6:45 in the morning.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\">Later the image morphed into a woman, and finally I made her an addict. At the time\u00a0 I took this picture there was no conscious thought that this was relevant to the story I was writing. Just a feeling that it was important.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\">Final version:<\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\"><i>The old woman wakes up to a pinched nerve in her back. A large, round moon bathes everything in its bleached light. She sits up and listens to the background hum of the city. Beyond the confines of the park the night traffic makes a shuffling sound like rats scurrying. Illicit couples are casing the nooks of the park for a few minutes of bliss, one shadow blending into another\u2026<\/i><\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\">And so it goes, until\u2026.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\"><i>She taps her fingernail on the syringe, and something flickers in her eyes. She inspects the bruised veins, searching for a suitable spot.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\">When she is high she has a vision, and this\u2014the vision my vision has\u2014was the character that brought everything together. I had my antagonist and my love-interest in one heroin-fueled vision of another vision. And she (the vision) was not a little ripple. She was a tsunami that demanded her own landscape but when she appeared and I thought of her backstory it brought everything else together.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\">So I threw away circa 200 pages and started over.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\">\u2014Contax. Zeiss 50mm 1.4.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Old Man. Venice. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1508,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[94,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-post-writing","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alessandrob.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alessandrob.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alessandrob.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alessandrob.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alessandrob.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1506"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/alessandrob.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1506\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1515,"href":"https:\/\/alessandrob.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1506\/revisions\/1515"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alessandrob.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alessandrob.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alessandrob.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alessandrob.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}