Image by Miki Korhonen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
To begin, I’d like to wish a very happy end of the LORD’s year 2013 to all who read and follow this little blog of mine. I can assure you all that I’ve been very busy for the past few weeks with an ever-growing writer’s block. I sure wish I’d know what is bumming me out, maybe I just liked 2012 way too much and the two-oh-thirteen just hasn’t sunk in yet. Perhaps I should give it time instead of spit in its eye.
I asked WordPress to give me a writing prompt:
Italo Calvino said: The more enlightened our houses are, the more their walls ooze ghosts. Describe the ghosts that live in this house:
I have plenty of hauntings on my walls already, I couldn’t hope to analyze the house I was offered. The prompt came with a picture that refused to load, so I am pretty sure that the ghosts in that enlightened house wish to remain in anonymity. So, I go back to WordPress and ask for another prompt:
Take a line from a song that you love or connect with. Now forget the song, and turn that line into the title or inspiration for your post.
Tim And The ARP Synth, 1981 (Photo credit: Evans Archive)
The question truly is, where does our creativity or inspiration stem from? People are inspired by different things and sometimes by the completely irrelevant. I’m sure I’d be very inspired by a hot taco or a quesadilla right about now, at least inspired to eat if not anything else. Just like the writing prompt above, it failed to inspire me to write, but it did make me want to rummage through some music that I haven’t listened for a good two or three years.
I wish I was as cool these days as I was back then, at least my music taste wasn’t as bad. But I still feel bad for broadening my music taste from Captain Beefheart to music inspired by Captain Beefheart.
Writing has never been an easy task. I could go back to what one of my favorite writers Kurt Vonnegut said on writer’s blocks:
..lots of blocks, but mainly I think I don’t have anything on my mind. I just want to write a book.
He does continue to speak on the subject, but the tape cuts off. So be it, we have these two forces fighting against each other, blocks and inspiration. Whether you are suffering of either one or both, you can be sure that it doesn’t matter one bit, since you need to be able to write something.
The issue I find myself struggling with is that I somehow have trapped myself in a long term block with certain projects that I hoped I would have finished by now, but sadly I haven’t. Of course, I was very excited to finish these projects, but soon I had to apologize to myself for failing myself yet again. The words refused to come out.
Kurt Vonnegut didn’t have much to say on inspiration from what I have gathered. He seems like he didn’t have any. Yet would that be what makes him so great in the eyes of many?
At least this guy had a clear narrative when he made his epic stories full of gods, sex, and wars. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Should we stop searching for inspiration? Maybe, but it would make for a pretty dull sounding world. As human beings I dare to generalize that as a species we love to be inspired. We can be inspired to do so many things, even horrible things. We could blame all bloody wars and atrocities plainly on very powerful inspired people. We could also blame religious texts on a bunch of inspired storytellers.
According to Merriam-Webster, inspiration is a divine influence or action; the action or power of moving the intellect or one’s emotions; or the state of being inspired.
So would it be fine to presuppose that Hitler was inspired when he took power and rid Germany of the Weimar Republic? And what would have inspired him? Insanity, a supposed god, lust for power, or a simple inspiration to boost his career?
Now I am only throwing rhetoric questions around because I have no answers to them. But while you look at all the questions above, think what could give inspiration its power over the human psyche.
Charles Manson was inspired by a few songs by The Beatles, and of course they were inspired by someone or something else —like Bob Dylan. Here I’d like to take you back to the ghosts in an enlightened house. Think of inspiration as this powerful force that travels the world and manifests in people. Like the ghosts oozing from the walls with their own intents.
As my search for inspiration in this blog draws to a close, I leave the keyboard with feeling of being conversing with something shady. Inspiration is a spirit, and a tool, that people use to get themselves excited. Using inspiration people create their reality and mold the reality of others. Inspiration is gray, zero, neutral, and this makes it as malevolent as you, or I.
And one final note, this blog entry was an experiment in automatic writing.
How ghouly..
Helsinki Poet 