[Edit: As the comic strip mentioned in this post is no longer displayed on this website, it can be found for reference here.]
You'll notice a song at the top of the current playlist titled "Cosmic Love". Listen to it and tell me it doesn't move you. It's been moving me for the past few days and as I was sluggishly oozing through rush hour traffic yesterday it really got my creative juices flowing. I couldn't wait to get home and play guitar or start working on a new short story or even contribute something to this dismal website. I just needed to create.
Now you'll also notice a new feature that I intend to update frequently. For now it's an excerpt of a comic strip. I'll have to discuss with my co-author what we will do with that space in the future. But at the moment it is a piece of a Calvin and Hobbes strip that I clumsily edited and threw in some text. The strip reminded me of Christopher Nolan's new film, Inception in that Calvin repeatedly falls to his death only to find that he was dreaming. Above, you see the final panels in which Calvin has once again fallen to his death and woken up with a fear of even leaving his room again. One of the big ideas in Inception is that true inspiration is a rare occurrence at which point the subconscious ignores all pre-acquired data and creates a completely new idea. An idea not influenced by ideas already recognized or memorized.
Stay with me. This has all been a long-winded exposition to preface the main idea behind this post: is inspiration possible?
K so dictionaries define inspiration as either "divine influence of the intellect" and stuff like that as well as the more reasonable "action or power of moving the intellect or emotions". So given this interpretation along with Nolan's rule that inspiration results in a new idea, let's get into it shall we?
Driving along in my little orange car, screaming the backup vocals to "Cosmic Love". I suddenly feel the need to create. To create something that will play "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" on people's heartstrings. To create beauty and laughter and colors and warmth. According to the dictionary I've been inspired. So I go home and record a guitar track with hints of the Florence song in it. I outline a short story about a man searching for closure from his parents' divorce. I write a blog about the song I heard and the movie I saw. As far as I can tell, I haven't really done anything original. The guitar track contains notes that every other musician uses and contains themes that I liked from "Cosmic Love". The short story is a reinventing of a story I meant to write a long time ago except replacing an old man with a young man and shellshock with divorce. And my parents just got divorced so that's completely uninspired. Then there's the blog. Who DOESN'T have a blog? Not to mention the fact that several ideas I'd had over the past few days are the basis on which I am attempting to suggest that I was inspired. See where I'm going with this?
Sure, there may not be another song that sounds exactly like my recording, but it's not a completely new sound unexperienced by any living creature. The short story contains tried and true archetypes and themes taken from my own life, nothing new there. And I just won't mention that blog again. It's too indulgent, ya?
Now even this isn't a new concept. I know I can't be the only one that thinks it's nearly impossible to invent anything anymore. As humans we've explored almost every capacity for the technologies we have available to us. Once an action has been invented (such as communication or transportation), the devices that make that action possible (such as phones or buses) are simply refinements of the devices that came before them. If a guy says "I have invented a phone that also dances and reads your Sunday paper", he hasn't invented anything. He's simply improved (and kind of creepified) an idea that already existed, the telephone. Any ideas we dream up or conceive are "inspired" by data that has already been stored in our subconscious. But to say that we could be inspired from absolute nothingness to create pure originality is...well...inconceivable.
If you disagree, shoot us a comment. We'd love to see what our reader thinks.
From my subconscious to your conscious,
Sad Blogger
