.inspiration

how, what, why

it’s good to know the reasons why we do the things we do, but when it comes to creation, and the impulse behind it, inspecting it too much and too closely kills the magic. or at least it does for me. if i’m in the middle of it and i start thinking about the process, it’s gone.

there are plenty of reasons to write, but writing is too vague an activity. one can write all sorts of things for all sorts of different reasons. music, too, can be approached in so many different ways and for different reasons. i write this sort of stuff i’m writing now to give shape to thoughts and work through things. i play scales to loosen my fingers. practical reasons. but these feed into, and are practice for, a deeper sort of engagement. the composer mode, it could be called.

except it’s more like antenna mode. yes, there are decisions to be made regarding the material, both in the moment and in the future, conscious and analytical, but the core of it is not made, exactly; it’s not invented; but rather channelled by the artist. but from where, from who. i don’t know. gods, angels, faeries, demons, devils, higher selves. in the end saying any of this is really not saying much. it sounds good, but trying to apply this supposed knowledge to real life proves that the point is elsewhere. and even getting into specifics, this god, this devil, it may do more harm than good, if for different reasons. if devil, the dangers are obvious. if god, then it might just overwhelm us, or fill us with delusions. and so on for everyone else between those two ends of the spectrum.

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so what is the reason for this deeper sort of engagement. why do some humans get into it. i reject both the evolutionary and the divine purpose theories as insufficient explanations. not that they aren’t both true in some way. but they’re not the root. i tend to fall on innateness as the root explanation for most things. still it does not explain this. it only explains things around it. why some people have it and others don’t. why it seems so contrary to both the pure imperatives of survival and the religious, communal aspects of life.

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i want to understand the process, but maybe it’s impossible. if i look into inspired moments, i come out with nothing concrete. to me it happens with writing and music. but it also has something of playing sports. or making love. you’re not unconscious, but it’s not everyday consciousness ether. your will is not impaired, but it’s also not imposing. this is of course what the chinese call wu wei. there are things that can only be seen through the corner of one’s eye, and i believe wu wei is one case. and it seems that you can only get into it, which is the point, in this way too. it can’t be forced.

so while one part of me wants to see it as individual affirmation, the imposition of order upon chaotic matter, something Nietzschean, like god in Genesis, that is just a little part of it. too much of it will kill the flow in an instant. so obviously, it might be tolerated by the gods of wu wei, but it’s not mandatory, or the point.

another part of me wants to believe that it can be seduced. but that’s a form of trickery, and that too is an exercise of the will. so in the end it’s just more nietzschean BS. it’s more like soulmates. an inescapable pull on both sides. seduction is beside the point, in the end.

i can refuse to act on inspiration, but i cannot force it to go away. i know this because when i am in situations where it comes and i cannot act on it, i try to tell it to go away and come back later, but it won’t. and then i’ll be distracted by it, living in that other reality, far from the concrete world in front of me, unable to truly focus on anything else.

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it’s obvious that it’s otherworldly in other ways too, since it can conquer and subdue (at least for a time), the body. i have a specific example in mind, from a year ago or so. i had a nasty pain at the base of my spine. it was horrible, and at that point it was two months old. i had resigned myself to it. if i sat for too long, it would get terrible. and i was in the last third of writing a book, so it got terrible. and then one day, i wrote for six hours straight, by hand. when my wife came in to say i should eat something, i noticed there was no pain in my back. nothing at all. and also my hand didn’t hurt. this state of grace lasted a couple of hours after i stopped writing. (the pain lasted a couple more weeks, when i finally took some pills and the inflammation or whatever it was went away; i learned two things: sometimes you can’t just wait for the pain to go away, you need the pills; and more importantly, that i needed another chair).

i have an addictive sort of personality, but i think the experience is addictive on its own too. at least i can’t think of anyone who would get into these sort of states and not want to be in it again. yet at the same time it’s very anti social. this is the other side of the coin of otherworldly things. and ignoring the world is a moral act. and you really have to ignore it. or rather you will find yourself ignoring it, and for however long you’re in it, you’re an alien in this world.

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besides not being possible to conjure at will, it’s also the case that it can’t be permanent. for one, normal life would be impossible. in extreme cases, this is the case with certain artists or scientists that have to be cared for by another, almost like children. but more importantly, i think it’s impossible because the reality of contrast is unavoidable. day and night, life and death, activity and rest. etc. the highs thus would cease to be highs if there were no lows. this is the case with chemical habituation but it happens certainly also with psychic elements too. so it seems like a rule that to get into it you also have to get out of it, and to be in it in some moments, you have to be out of it in others. so inspiration is not about one thing, but two. it’s inspiration and expiration, both, together, that do the trick, even if we only tend to focus on the positive side of things.

(if heaven is in any way tied to the soul, then it will also in some way partake of necessary contrast, since by definition the soul is itself a combination of opposites, spirit and matter, intelligence and body, or however else we want to put it.)

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whatever it ends up being, what is channelled in this trance state can not be got any other way. you can’t build a machine to generate this stuff. this is probably because it’s being to being communication. it’s individual on both sides, and it has no mechanics, but rather organics, and these keep changing, adapting, they exist in time. they may have something cyclical about them, but this word has been too distorted. it’s more rhythmic, than cyclical in the conventional sense. so you have to get into it in the moment, and the next time you try it will be another tune.

repeating steps, following recipes. none of that works. it’s not ritual magic. it’s something else beyond technique. although technique for the specific activity is required, a prerequisite, the actual getting into the groove is not about technique, and there are no techniques to get into it. of course, all sorts of spiritual teachers say there are, and i can only speak for myself. for me it doesn’t work like that. there might not be seduction, as said above, but it’s certainly infatuation. falling in love. falling in something. and technique is the opposite of this. at its core, technique is bureaucracy.

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what about the content. i can try to find reasons for why i write this or that. i’d love to know the real reason why i shift gears so much, since it’s happened all throughout my creative life. it’s obviously not independent from my own interests. but are these really chosen. i don’t think so, not at the root. and i thus have no idea why this story or that story appears. the fact that most often it starts with a specific sentence makes it feel like someone is rather telling .me. the story. and it’s the same with music. it starts with an internal hearing, and then the rest of me gets engaged in the task of translating it to this dimension.

when i was writing fantastical things, and due to the intensity of the experience, i deluded myself into thinking that it had some sort of cosmic purpose to it. then for whatever reason i then got into the exact same intense state of trance writing about down to earth things that really excite no one. a deeper one, even. and i can surely wax poetic about the importance of seeing the magic in every day life. and sure, that’s all true. but that’s not why, in the end. the real why remains elusive.

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so the last question, or maybe it should be the first, is: what is it for. that’s the real why of something. and again i don’t know. in some cases, obviously, the moment itself seems to be the goal. playing a sport, for example. i guess it could be to win a tournament, but that doesn’t seem like a higher aspiration to me than playing the game. but with more permanent and creative matters it makes sense that there be other reasons, deeper ones. you write so someone reads. you compose music so someone listens to it. and you want them to be affected by the experience. but that’s not really al that satisfying of an answer either. perhaps it should be. or maybe that’s just the intensity of the experience tricking me into seeing more in it than there really is. perhaps there is no real answer to any of this. by which i mean, any answer i might be able to put in words will be meaningless to anyone else.

i guess what i’m saying is that what you just read might be completely pointless.