seeing is believing

.... I start with a quote from another cineastic great - Jim Jarmusch 

"Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic."

I translate this to how be by the water. I try to watch closely in order to "steal". Go around like a thief and steal impressions. Soak it up with all my senses. . We must think a lot about how to see and why. We fishermen also need to think about focus, perception and from that develop a „piscatorial empathy“ … in other words „think fish“

Hearing and smelling are of lesser importance for fly tying. Vision is the prominent one here. For that one must have a good understanding how we see. I believe our eye/brain system works a bit like a holodeck. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodeck

We take samples around us and our brain lays out a map of these images. So what we see is only a fraction. A new sample if you will which will be placed in this 3D modell. So changes in this „holodeck“ are sometimes recognised, and sometimes not. When the change is recognised because it is fitting a certain pattern our brain is looking for. Food items for example, or members of our own kind - preferably of the opposite sex (or whatever you are into).

These are, and have to be very quick decisions. Otherwise we´d not survive. No living thing can analyse impressions to death. (pun intended)

So ask yourself -- at what stage do we react to a certain visual pattern. At which stage do you decide to move out of a flying objects path? Right when you see it coming towards you, or after having studied the arrow structure, make and analysed the tribal markings on it and found out the object was fired from an enemy?

Correct, you decide by intuition and move out of the way as quickly as you can - in case of the flying object. Next selv test is to think about you react to an insect or a side on the kitchen wall? Do you have to be very close and count the legs or is the decision - that´s a bug rather come from instinct and intuition?

So when looking at a flies silhouette on or in the water you can very quickly decide (or better said feel) whether this a good fly or not. Just trust your stomach and start believing your instincts. They have been around for much longer than intelligence.

To train your instincts you need to be out there as much as possible and be conscious. Awareness of you surroundings is very important. We need a serious re-calibration of our senses.

Have fun, be in nature, play - and fish a lot. /t.z.