I'm sat on a bed in my friend's room, whilst both friends are asleep on the bed, with the Labyrinth on in the background- Bowie for the win. Just for the hair- and for the first time in months I'm not aching all over. Codeine really is a blessing in disguise. N.B. apparently, they're not asleep, muttered comments about well, yes, about 42 must be kept to myself in the future.
Where does inspiration come from? From the heavens? From beyond that, beyond the universe? Is it a tangible thing, or is it like a shadow on a cloudy day? Or is it the pattern of light hiding in the water and throwing sparkles up on your wall?
It's different for everyone. They say Newton got his inspiration from an apple, a physical thing, and Archimedes found his in the bath. I do a lot of my good work at night, in the small hours of the morning, like now in fact. Things drift to me on the night, 'soft as velvet, dark as sin'. I must admit, when there is light around, I am usually more concerned with wanting to be elsewhere, namely out in the light, enjoying it. I don't do that enough regrettably. Not enjoying it for it's own sake.
Moods play a big part, well of course they do really. If you have lost someone, you want to write something to remember them by, if you have just had the best day of your life then things will naturally be a lot more exuberant than it would be in another case. (the birds are singing now. Its times like this when I could almost forget that I am in a small room in a huge student estate, surrounded by people.)
I find that most ideas come to me in the small of the night because by that point I have had a fairly full day, and my body is accustomed to earlyish nights. So by three or four in the morning I am at that point where I am half asleep, half meditating, and because I'm not chasing ideas down they can form naturally. Do you find that? The more you try to force an idea, the less it works or works well?
But once that idea is there, and has been left to brew for a while, then it works and that is the point you can push it along and cause it to have a more structured shape, to make it work for you, If you're really lucky, it turns out to be a fantastic idea, not simply a good one and the writing seems to write itself. (If you had seen that last paragraph unedited, you would be able to tell when it is being written: It had lost all attempts at sentence structure and grammar. Which is a pity, me being a fair bit of a grammar nazi.)
Looking at some of the wonderful pieces of art, be it a painting, a sculpture, a book, or even an inspired piece of research it's hard to believe that it is all due to a chaotic connection of nerves in someones brain. And that leads to the thought of is there outside help? is there something giving us ideas and thoughts, and if so, are they tangible to them?
I can imagine it wouldn't be a glamorous job, not at all, I can envision an open office plan building, with a typical office warren made of noticeboards for walls and pictured of the wife or the dog on the desk, with those awful inspirational calenders that seem to find their way into every office environment of this type, with thousands upon thousands of workers, all at their desks, filling out forms on old clunky computers that don't work very well any more.
'Oh hell, I've got another P189. Lord but there are a lot of them going around at the minute, production must be trying to fill a quota, although why they want yet another bad lesbian porn manga, I'll never understand.' And: ' Arrrrrrrggh that stupid computer has crashed AGAIN, all this last week's work was on that. I'll never get that production bonus if this carries on, tech support promised me this wouldn't happen again, PROMISED!'
If it is like that, then I think that I would rather prefer that it was random mis-firings of neurones. Because lets face it, the normal neurons would be concerned with keeping the body alive. Self preservation is a wonderful thing, and sometimes I think genius must run counter to that. 'The good die young.' Sure they do. Because they forget to do the normal things like eat and pay the bills so they have clean water and heating in the dead of winter and such.
I think that because it is now full light and I started this in full dark, and because the ramblings in my head, let alone on paper are starting to get increasingly disjointed, I will end this here, because I could go on for a long time and this is already of rather epic length. Good day.
Where does inspiration come from? From the heavens? From beyond that, beyond the universe? Is it a tangible thing, or is it like a shadow on a cloudy day? Or is it the pattern of light hiding in the water and throwing sparkles up on your wall?
It's different for everyone. They say Newton got his inspiration from an apple, a physical thing, and Archimedes found his in the bath. I do a lot of my good work at night, in the small hours of the morning, like now in fact. Things drift to me on the night, 'soft as velvet, dark as sin'. I must admit, when there is light around, I am usually more concerned with wanting to be elsewhere, namely out in the light, enjoying it. I don't do that enough regrettably. Not enjoying it for it's own sake.
Moods play a big part, well of course they do really. If you have lost someone, you want to write something to remember them by, if you have just had the best day of your life then things will naturally be a lot more exuberant than it would be in another case. (the birds are singing now. Its times like this when I could almost forget that I am in a small room in a huge student estate, surrounded by people.)
I find that most ideas come to me in the small of the night because by that point I have had a fairly full day, and my body is accustomed to earlyish nights. So by three or four in the morning I am at that point where I am half asleep, half meditating, and because I'm not chasing ideas down they can form naturally. Do you find that? The more you try to force an idea, the less it works or works well?
But once that idea is there, and has been left to brew for a while, then it works and that is the point you can push it along and cause it to have a more structured shape, to make it work for you, If you're really lucky, it turns out to be a fantastic idea, not simply a good one and the writing seems to write itself. (If you had seen that last paragraph unedited, you would be able to tell when it is being written: It had lost all attempts at sentence structure and grammar. Which is a pity, me being a fair bit of a grammar nazi.)
Looking at some of the wonderful pieces of art, be it a painting, a sculpture, a book, or even an inspired piece of research it's hard to believe that it is all due to a chaotic connection of nerves in someones brain. And that leads to the thought of is there outside help? is there something giving us ideas and thoughts, and if so, are they tangible to them?
I can imagine it wouldn't be a glamorous job, not at all, I can envision an open office plan building, with a typical office warren made of noticeboards for walls and pictured of the wife or the dog on the desk, with those awful inspirational calenders that seem to find their way into every office environment of this type, with thousands upon thousands of workers, all at their desks, filling out forms on old clunky computers that don't work very well any more.
'Oh hell, I've got another P189. Lord but there are a lot of them going around at the minute, production must be trying to fill a quota, although why they want yet another bad lesbian porn manga, I'll never understand.' And: ' Arrrrrrrggh that stupid computer has crashed AGAIN, all this last week's work was on that. I'll never get that production bonus if this carries on, tech support promised me this wouldn't happen again, PROMISED!'
If it is like that, then I think that I would rather prefer that it was random mis-firings of neurones. Because lets face it, the normal neurons would be concerned with keeping the body alive. Self preservation is a wonderful thing, and sometimes I think genius must run counter to that. 'The good die young.' Sure they do. Because they forget to do the normal things like eat and pay the bills so they have clean water and heating in the dead of winter and such.
I think that because it is now full light and I started this in full dark, and because the ramblings in my head, let alone on paper are starting to get increasingly disjointed, I will end this here, because I could go on for a long time and this is already of rather epic length. Good day.
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