Inspiration and Motivation

I wish I could say I’m sitting here right now, feverishly banging away on this keyboard as I let my jumbled thoughts tumble out onto this page.

But I can’t; it’s more of a half-truth than it is the full-truth.

I can’t seem to do that kind of thing, no matter how hard I try, which is probably why I can’t do it. Writing is almost like a possession, where something takes over the hand and the phalanges flail across the keys – click, click, click – until a coherent narrative forms.

It’s an exhilarating feeling when your mind is working in overdrive and you can’t seem to get what’s inside your imagination written down fast enough. Writers know what I’m talking about. That feeling you have when you’ve lost any and all inspiration, walked away from the screen (or pen and pad) and thrown yourself at the world, when out of nowhere, a metaphorical truck hits you and the creativity dam breaks.

I’ve never been in high, but it’s what I’d imagine it to be.

I believe this kind of euphoria transcends the writing realm into other parts of life. I see it in music, I feel it in music and I identify with musicians when they put on a passionate performance. I’m thinking specifically of a performance by pianist Diana Krall on a show called Spectacle, which I will post as well. She plays an old jazz tune called ‘Night Train” with such electricity, it seems as if the atmosphere is alive, each note looking for it’s place in the auditorium. You can hear it in the way she deftly plays the keys when she goes into a solo, when she hammers down in a crescendo or when she grunts in satisfaction, hearing the sounds coming from underneath the piano canopy.

It’s that kind of euphoria writers are always chasing – always wanting to tap right into the imagination and transcribe thoughts onto paper. Unfortunately it doesn’t work like a tap where one can turn it on and off at will, which would be awesome, yet bland at the same time. Half the fun of writing is going through everyday life looking for a good story to tell, not necessarily a unique or off-beat one, just a good one. Sometimes it’s told well, sometimes not, and sometimes it’s an utter failure.

But we keep trying.

We keep trying because we inherently know that there is an audience that wants to hear these stories. Even if that audience is ourselves.

Isn’t that morbid?

It’s a cathartic experience to write, to play music, to be an artist because inspiration can bottle up until something takes takes it, shoves a breath mint in it and shakes the damn thing till it explodes. Then you’ve got a big mess of creativity that you don’t know what to do with but you know you must do something with it.

And that’s the fun of it all, seeing inspiration come alive when it strikes like a lightning bolt. Like a switch has been flipped and all the body can do is get out of the way as the mind takes over and spits out thoughts, words, sentences, analogies, allegories, metaphors...



“Whatever you are, be a good one.”
-Abraham Lincoln