Possible answers to interesting questions

I have been asked some very tough questions the first week or school that I will attempt to answer:

I plan to answer all the questions by the end of the week

IS WORK LINEAR?
This question causes me to look back at the work I have made since Ireland, but also look far beyond that, back to my childhood, when I used to play dress-up and act out fantasies about princess this
and queen that .  I used to sit on the floor in the kitchen and play with my favorite "toys," my grandmother's flour sifter and her hand mixer (the wireless version). Both toys were metal and had wooden handles. Both required a cranking motion to get them to work. The sounds they made was what I loved about them. The hand mixer made a high pitched rhythm that stopped and started at intervals as I turned the crank. I loved to watch the metal flash as light reflected off of the whisks. The sifter had a low hum that I could maintain for long periods of time. What does this have to do with my work now? I still have a fascination with that memory, as well as with the tools themselves. Today in my studio practice, I still use these toys in similarly unexpected ways, or ways that I I find interesting.  Taking this into consideration, it seems that work can be linear in short intervals, for example, one work leads to an idea which leads to a different work.  In the grander scheme, work is completely circular, well, more like a big spiral that encompasses the whole of a person's experience.  Sometimes the arms on the spiral may touch on one thing or another, only to change course and reveal a new aspect of a memory that can be revisited in the studio.

IF HUMOR IS SO IMPORTANT IN MY WORK, WHY NOT WRITE ABOUT IT?

WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN INFLUENCE, CITATION AND REFERENCE?

WHY AM I USING THE TERM "IDENTITY" WHEN IT REALLY DOESN'T DESCRIBE MY WORK?