Inspiration has a Mind of its Own

Fathoming the inner workings of creativity and inspiration is like explaining what dreams are made of

By: Rach April 07 Aug | 2018

Do you know that moment when you wake up and your dreams are so vivid in your head but you make no sense trying to put words together to explain them? That's basically the common sense of creativity and inspiration.

The inexplicable phenomenon behind #inspiration is so fascinating, when you cannot translate in words what only you could see or feel and channel it out into a creative opus you call your #art.
Artists are often asked about what inspires them; in which case it is very easy to utter in response elements like #nature, society, politics, romance and so on. But what does that even mean?
All these are but a trigger to the inner workings of an artist's #mind, how they perceive these different elements and how they make them feel and there you have it, a #musical bone structure or a piece of a hundred something words spilled out on paper.

Inspiration does not have a function button. It is not something you can always purposefully induce, it is a state of mind, a floating cloud above your head that has to coincide in passing with a certain train of #thoughts. All artists have at the very least, one common #creative factor or #muse; do they all create the same art? Do all songs sound the same coming from the same inspiration source? Not really. The common #influence might be in some occasions palpable but that's the raw beauty of this phenomenon, in the way it manifests itself so uniquely different from one artist to another. A personal #interpretation of the common deeming it uncommon. It's a cause-effect relationship between the mind and what surrounds it yet uncontrollable - making you chasing it at times or letting it go to find it come back on its own.

Inspiration is like a fleeting thought. Sometimes, you're feeling your creative #energy soaring high and yet your input is not on the same caliber. It has to come naturally, it is part of the talent, it is a force that wakes you up at night and out of the comfort of your bed because it needs to be externalized, it is there hovering inside your mind, it is not even a part of your #dreams, it is a distinct thought with its own #mechanism that pulls you out of the unconscious to consciously map out your desires and/or fears. Sometimes it hits you when you least expect it, like in the middle of a philosophy class at noon, after a blank sleepless night, turning into a writing session that serves you as a closure to your recently-ended relationship. It is cathartic in the most expressive ways, it is the words that you cannot word out, it is the #melody you hum out of the blue and the flow that makes you feel like a super human, leaving you in awe about what just came out of you. Inspiration is not the means, it is the beginning and the end.

Creativity's biggest enemy is sometimes not the lack of inspiration but rather #procrastination. The idea is there, you can see it crystal clear but you can't get it out. You'd even doubt it is there in the first place. You start going over older works questioning yourself "how in the name of the universe did I ever do THIS?" it is so intangible and yet so present and sometimes you're sucked into it, it's possessing you and you're just a vessel occupied by it as it maneuvers you completely and at other times, you are easily distracted by literally anything around, focused on everything but the idea. Keep a pencil and paper on you, go to your “notes” on your smartphone, whatever it is that floats your boat, be prepared to receive your inspiration, to embrace it and enclose it for it might escape you right in front of the eye in a split of a second.

Music as a language, Creativity as an engine and Inspiration as a ritual will never cease to bedazzle the human mind with their limitless mystery and mechanism.

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