on writing - connie willis

Stories of wonder often have their beginnings in noticing some magic
everyone else has missed, in making some connection no one else has
seen, or in illuminating some ordinary thing with skill and style so
that it seems extraordinary.   - Connie Willis

photo stories - nastya kaletkina

When I see these from Nastya, I am prompted to think she found
a mental institution for fairies deep in the woods and they let her
take photos for a day.  Though I doubt this is true, her pictures are
wonderful...

Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping
than you can understand.
- W.B. Yeats, The Collected Poems

from unexpected places - pretend vintage magic

These photos - whether real, photoshopped, or manipulated in
some way - are stunning, capturing a vague and compelling
feeling of magic.  Rapunzel, the borrowers, tinker bell, wizards
and witches.  It's interesting to see magical images caught in
photographs instead of illustrations for a change, photos
treated to feign being fished out of your grandmother's attic.
Maybe one of these could inspire a story - what magic and
whimsy is being glimpsed here?

I think, at a child's birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother
to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift would be curiosity.
- Eleanor Roosevelt

By Charles B. Carma

By Joanna Pallaris

photo stories - denise grunstein

Denise's photographs are a bit like those of Tim Walker.  The
work of both artists is whimsical, bursting with color, often
mysterious.  I also see Lisa Frank here - a grown up Lisa Frank
complete with mist, creepy masks, and wintered death among
the vibrant saturation.  These photographs beg the question:
what is going on here?  How would you answer?

The answer is dreams. Dreaming on and on. Entering the world
of dreams and never coming out. Living in dreams for the rest of
time.  - Haruki Murakami, Sputnik Sweetheart

photo stories - shall we fly?

Halloween is coming, which brings to mind witches riding brooms
and ghosts riding air.  Here are a few images, some eerie, some
ghosty, taken by photographers dreaming dreams of flight, a magic
we are able to achieve with our minds, but not our bodies.

Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with
your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you
will always long to return.
- Leonardo da Vinci

By Kubra Kactioglu

By Brandon Long

from unexpected places - peculiar objects

Each of these has a story...  the first could be the house of a traveling gnome,
the second the shoes of a futuristic mistress in an urban fantasy, then tagging
rings in a science fiction adventure, an enigmatic instrument that is the
subject of a historical fiction piece similar to The Red Violin, then a head
dress in a hybrid science fiction/fantasy, an instrument of a culture long
extinct, and last, a wicked witch's disguise or a robot's masquerade attire.

Or whatever else you dream up.

Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.

- Albert Einstein

Gnome house, a blogger called it

Designed by Aoi Kotsuhiroi

the well written - jo walton

In honor of Jo's Hugo Award win...

At home I walked through a haze of belongings that knew, at least vaguely, who
they belonged to.  Grampar’s chair resented anyone else sitting on it as much as
he did himself.  Gramma’s shirts and jumpers adjusted themselves to hide her
missing breast.  My mother’s shoes positively vibrated with consciousness.  Our
toys looked out for us.  There was a potato knife in the kitchen that Gramma
couldn’t use.  It was an ordinary enough brown-handled thing, but she’d cut herself
with it once, and ever after it wanted more of her blood.  If I rummaged through the
kitchen drawer, I could feel it brooding.  After she died, that faded.  Then there were
the coffee spoons, rarely used, tiny, a wedding present.  They were made of silver,
and they knew themselves superior to everything else and special.

None of these things did anything.  The coffee spoons didn’t stir the coffee without
being held or anything.  They didn’t have conversations with the sugar tongs about
who was the most cherished.  I suppose what they really did was physiological.  
They confirmed the past, they connected everything, they were threads in a tapestry.

 - Jo Walton, Among Others

By Brian McGloin

photo stories - museums

Museums are certainly full of magic, as evidenced by all the stories and films
surrounding humans' time inside them.  Night at the Museum, The Barnam Museum
by Steven Millhauser, The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, The Girl
in the Castle Inside the Museum by Kate Bernheimer, and others.

What magic would you dream up to take place inside a museum?

It is probable that at some moment between birth and death, every inhabitant of our
city will enter the Barnum Museum.  It is less probable, but not impossible, that at
some moment in the history of the museum our entire citizenry, by a series of
overlapping impulses, will find themselves within these halls.  For a moment the city
will be deserted.  Our collective attention, directed at the displays of the Barnum
Museum, will cause the halls to swell with increased detail.  Outside, the streets and
buildings will grow vague; street corners will begin to dissolve; unobserved, a garbage
can cover, blown by the wind, will roll silently toward the edge of the world.

- Steven Millhauser, We Others (The Barnam Museum)

By Malbork

Field Museum Moon Model

illustration - lilac ghost

Nature, animal, and human weave in and out of each other in
Lilac Ghost's work.  She paints with tea and watercolor, which is
almost a representation of her themes, and is inspired by the things
and ideas we all find magical in youth - dancing butterflies, grand
antlers, cute little owls, melancholy mermaids, and friendly ghosts.

Click below to see more.

The earth has music for those who listen.
- George Santayana

illustration - beatriz martin vidal

I've already posted about Beatriz, and I'm going to again because her work
is so packed with stories just asking to be told in words.

The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls.
- Pablo Picasso

from unexpected places - cartier collections

One piece in each of these photos is actually a Cartier Jeweler creation.
And any could offer up a story...  Is one a robot among the real?
A witch's magicked pet?  A princess' pin breathed to life?
A self-aware museum artifact wishing to be like all the other flowers?

Via Trendland

photo stories - beata cervin

Beata brings dreams into the world she sees around her, or brings subjects into dreams.
Whether its balloons and a feather taking one to another world, or a girl bringing back
a suitcase full of clouds, Beata is an expert visual storyteller and a weaver of magic.

illustration - loonaki

Loonaki illustrates long-haired beauties discovering, breathing, being, loving nature.
What kind of water spirit, mother earth, rainbow girl stories to these inspire?
Let the characters run wild in your mind.

As Ray Bradbury says in Zen in the Art of Writing, Characters would do my work for me,
if I let them alone, if I gave them their heads, which is to say, their fantasies, their frights.

AND

Find a character, like yourself, who will want something or not want something, with
all his heart.  Give him running orders.  Shoot him off.  Then follow as fast as you can go. 
The character, in his great love or hate, will rush you through to the end of the story.

from the screen - beginners

ANNA
There is a tree, and cars, another building like this one.  People in the building like us.
Half of them believe this will never work out.
The other half believe in magic.  It's like war between them.

OLIVER
How do you know so much about people?

- screenplay by Mike Mills

Via Olympus Pictures

a dreamer's wisdom - g.k. chesterton

The world will never starve for want of wonders, but for want of wonder.

- G.K. Chesterton

By Mary Gutfleisch

the well written - a dreamer's wisdom - charles de lint

I want to be magic. I want to touch the heart of the world and make it smile.
I want to be a friend of elves and live in a tree. Or under a hill. I want to marry
a moonbeam and hear the stars sing. I don't want to pretend at magic anymore.
I want to be magic.

- Charles de Lint

By Kat Cameron