As I sit here wracking my intellect in search of an appropriate topic for my writings tonight a single thought seems to occur to me “Why am I lacking inspiration?” And then immediately my pondering became fueled by the very exploration accidentally embarked upon. So here I put forth my ideas on inspiration, which have been achieved while attempting to attain it.
It would seem that most people confuse inspiration with motivation. Often we see producers not producing, and bemoaning their lack of inspiration. Admittedly, it is an easy mistake to make. Where such a faux pas generally occurs is that inspiration often gives us our motivation. Ultimately motivation is what has us “do” things such as write. Respectively, inspiration is one of the key ingredients that allow us to write well. An entity can be motivated to write, and many do often, but with out some sort of inspiration we find their words to be soulless and generally humdrum. It is a fact often embraced and overlooked in the class rooms today. Teachers give students free reign to compile an assignment on the topic of their choosing in the hopes that inspiration will liven their subject and allow the respective fascinations to become infectious. On the other extreme students are often backed into a corner by topics assigned against their will. Of course experience with both types of writing are necessary, if for no other reason to help hone skills and help show ourselves what we already intuitively know. Ultimately these exercises help widen our eyes to the fact that motivation, churning out our selected task, is different than inspiration or helps make our tasks good.
Now it seems that Inspiration is linked with putting our selves into our creative subject. It is as if we invest some small part of our very being into whatever we are creating when we are inspired. This is true in two very abstract ways. The first is our time. Currently we are only given a relatively small finite amount of time to complete our affairs before our selves, what makes us “us”, ceases to exist in this plane. So, with that in mind, anything we choose to invest our time in holds a part of our being, almost as if we took a teaspoon of sand from our hourglasses and blew it into our product. But this can be achieved, as explained before, simply though motivation. Investing time is not enough because objects produced can easily lack our personal touch beyond time. This is where our second abstract way of imparting our very being comes into play. Our creativity is what allows us to truly tell our endeavors apart from others. The personal brand of our intellect is what helps us distinguish the excrement we produce in our motivated practice from what is “Good.” Inspiration gives itself most wholly here, going further than it's capacity to provide motivation. What inspiration does is allow an individual to do something, anything really, on any topic, and some how put their own creative twist on it. This twist is a part of our being one most identify with. Should a subject lack our personal intrusion it would be indistinguishable from many others created like it. It is our little way of letting others know that we were here, and we did this, even if there is no way to truly distinguish who “we” are.
When we try and describe our inspiration we often attribute some particular object we are modifying. The inventor sees a box and becomes inspired to put a hole in the top making it more useful to him. Perhaps at it's most basic core inspiration is the connection of ideas and the need to toy with said connections. Thus a painter becomes inspired by a model and connects their knowledge of form technique to create their own view of the subject. Perhaps the force which seems to randomly force these ideas together in our own minds will forever be a mystery, perhaps not. Whether the origins be divine in nature, or the random firing of neurons in our cortex no one denies that we enjoy this oddity of consciousness. As mentioned before some how gaining inspiration and letting our creativity run rampant is often what allows us to distinguish great work from the mediocrity we often see. To date I know of no individual who knows why we have such an affinity for the creative elements of our souls, but for some reason we still seek inspiration even when it seems ever fleeting. Thus we must take it when it comes, and be as prepared as we can for it in order to achieve a proper execution. Stepping further, inspiration provides motivation by having us produce mediocrity in order to stay sharp for its arrival.
Perhaps my message became a bit muddled during my exploration. Who knows, I might explore this topic again some day and try and make things a bit more clear. Until my next post, which will likely be some time in the future, have fun trying to make yourselves understood.
-Pliskin42
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