Where does inspiration come from? You certainly don’t need it to start creating but when it does come, where does it come from?
I was wondering that in bed last night after having spent a long day with my uncle sorting through the things in his house, after the death of my aunt and before he moves to a flat with more people around him. it’s funny that this should have made me think of inspiration, as I wasn’t experiencing it or any space for it. But somehow all the material objects we examined carried so much within them, so much history, while in themselves not being conscious of this at all… maybe that’s just like us, and moments when inspiration appears seemingly out of nowhere happen because one of those strands of history, of previous experience within us has come into contact with the part of our mind that brings things to life.
By mind of course I don’t mean brain, I don’t mean that there’s a part of the brain that is concerned with ‘bringing things to life’, although maybe there is some correlation in the blood flow that can be measured when someone has the experience of an idea arriving that feels as if it’s from someone else -you’d have to be very lucky to catch a moment like that as by definition it couldn’t be done on purpose – anyway I digress.
By mind I mean a kind of scooping up of consciousness that interacts with a particular person and their body and experience, maybe it’s a soul. And one of the things it does = yes that’s better than talking about parts – one of the things it does is to bring memories and thoughts and dreams and feelings and artworks of all kinds into life.
It comes from nowhere but it comes from everywhere. From your past and your ancestors, from all the weathers and wars and songs and stories passed along. from things we learned as children. from memories that may or may not be our personal ones. Whispers come through and take different forms, in your mouth.
I find it really fruitful to take the sense of words, or paintings or tunes coming from nowhere and the sense of everything coming very much from somewhere, as there’s so very much somewhere to come from – and holding them together in the space I think in. (I’m not going to try and define ‘mind’ again. don’t worry. It gives me the feeling that something new, just might come through.
Wishing you inspiration!