Sweet Inspiration. The ever elusive intangible.Like the wind, no one knows where it comes from or where it goes.
Some might say that the best and worst of the human endeavor is, and has been, based on inspiration in one form or another. As authors, we are inspired to write, often about the inspirations of real-life people, and, of our fictional characters. We’ve even written about this virtue, both good and bad, in animals. We describe with skilled literatic detail the exodus of events which led our word formed creations to the threshold of it, and beyond.
Beginning scribes will often hear words of wisdom and experience from their more accomplished counterparts and peers telling them not to wait for it, to forge our thoughts onto the page daily, to rely on our technical skills and work ethic in support of our efforts to compose and complete masterpieces. And we do. Someway, somehow, functional bridges are built across the expansive gaps separating those sweeping and torrential, yet beautifully golden moments from the foundational ones.
We pray we might be hurled into fabled hurricanes of fear, pain, hatred, anguish and despair, of hope, sacrifice, love and triumph each time we put pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard. But, inspiration, being her own mistress, appears as she pleases, only when she is willing. As authors we live and die by her graces, her passion and tender caresses. We are destroyed by the torment of her dark heart and white hot scorn as she dances in the moonlight with someone else, somewhere else. We endlessly await the breath of life she imparts to our souls and minds and abilities and words. She has many faces and infinite forms. Our souls call out to her never knowing if she will come.
Or not.
I haven’t always written but I’ve always been a writer. Blessed to have been a fearless dream chaser from day one, life for me has always been, and still is, a perpetual stream of raging moments wherein lay treasures of all the profound elements of life, in their purest sense. I have left hurried footprints in the sands of time and many a high speed full body imprint on the brick wall of life. Every second I exist I am inspired by what the next one will hold and inspired that I might live to enjoy it or fight through it in a hazy bloodbath of negativity.
Nature in all her fury has unspeakable beauty. The walls of the pit of despair are lined with scrawled messages of hope and testimony. Love – the crystalline thrill of it in the eyes and voice of someone familiar, defined by the endless trek to reach them. Haunting and horrific screams of the damned shattering the virgin stillness of the night. A brand new moment of discovery in the heart of a child. Shadows of dusk and darkness gasping as a blazing burnt orange sun plunges behind the shoulder of a snow capped summit. The stinging rain of a summer thunderstorm. The classic peacefulness of strolling the ocean shoreline at dawn. A soft bed and warm blankets. Sitting in chair on the back porch doing nothing. Walking out to the mailbox on a sunny day. The face of death or the eternal visage of life reflected in the glimmer of every molecule. In all, inspiration lives, though it may not be in the form of an answered prayer or even something we might understand.
There is hope in every moment of fear and fear in every moment of joy. Confidence rises like a phoenix behind the smoldering pyre of doubt and uncertainty. Despair blows like a frigid arctic winter wind against the doors of our homes of peace, while we yearn for the certainty of spring. Within every breath is the desire for the next, every thought the dream of another. Gems of revelation and insight litter the landscape of all that we see and hear and think and feel, all that we know or will ever know. Not one of us is ever really a stranger to, nor are we abandoned by that which we are told and therefore perceive comes from outside of us. It does not. It is always within us, always at our finger tips, always in the next breath and thought. Always.
Stop and examine the myriad of precious stones you have routinely tread upon. Pause between breaths or blinks of your eyes. Savor the gift of utterance to a loved one. Suddenly in a blinding flash all around you will be the very thing you only knew to wait for. You will overflow with it, you will infuse your characters, narration, description and dialogue with it, and because of it. Imagination too, requires the lifeblood of inspiration to keep it alive, just so you know.
Happy and so very grateful to have returned from countless green pastures and bloodstained battlefields both in my mind and those which literally cover the earth I reach into myself, through myself, and beyond myself knowing I am never far away from nor will it be long until I find – Sweet Inspiration.
Very poetic and intense. It seems inspiration is always the mistress, never the bride. Would she lose her sting if we had access to her 24/7? Or do the moments without her intensify her power over us in those moments when we are reunited?
Hi david, thanks for the comment, and, you pose the question of the ages. I can’t answer it,other than to say that for me, I have learned to tap the fire of it within me for everything I write and even outside of writing in my life in general. And yes, for me separation seems to intensify our reunting, and I have to be careful not to get too familiar with her, too often, fearing that, yes, she might lose her sting.
However, let me add that she lives within me all the time.