Do You Believe in the Artist's Faith and the Power of the Unknown?

Yes, artists inherently believe in the unknown and the power of intangibles. It is in an artist’s nature to have faith in the unknown, to deal with intangibles. After all, we work from nothing more than an idea and a dream. It takes faith to actualize the invisible. But times are tough for dreamers, and faith is hard to come by. That’s why I love the Christmas season, because it reminds me of those days when magic was truth and belief resolute. I was 4-years old; and my cousins and I were spending Christmas at Grandmother’s house.  On Christmas Eve, Santa Claus came to visit, as he did each year. He collected my lengthy list, asked pointed questions about my behavior, and left me with a candy cane. “There you go, Pesta,” he said as I crawled off his lap. Pesta was my uncle’s nickname for me, a cruel but apt derivative of Crista. But how did Santa know that? Surely “Uncle Skunkle” hadn’t told him? There was something familiar about Santa that year. He sounded an awful lot like Uncle Skunkle, and laughed like him too. I looked around the room of grown-ups, each tipsy on hot cups of Tom and Jerry, and I noted that Uncle Skunkle was not amongst the tippl...