I have been thinking a great deal lately about inspiration, sparked by a brilliant talk given by Elizabeth Gilbert at a recent TED Conference. In it, she speaks of her "wild success," Eat, Pray, Love and the jarring likelihood that her greatest success, her best work, is behind her. She talks about the apparent propensity of writers to be alcoholic manic-depressives and how artists can brace themselves against this tendency. Saxon, during the talk, stated that he had never assumed writing or artistry to necessitate pain and suffering, the "tortured" existence. But I always have, even before the time I first thought about becoming a writer - such a belief has not deterred me in my desire to make writing my life's work. Gilbert hearkens back to ancient Greek and Roman ideas regarding artists and creative types. The Greeks, she says, believed that artists had daemons that helped them, which is a cool idea. But I prefer (as does Gilbert, presumably, as she devoted a large portion of her talk to it) the Roman conception that an artist had a genius residing in the walls of his studio, home, office, etc. feeding him inspiration. Artists had geniuses, in that understanding - they were not geniuses. And I love that. Because I am not a genius. Don't get me wrong, I think of myself as a very intelligent person and I strive to grow more so consistently. But I do not have some kind of secret insight into life or the way people are that others do not. I am a person, and a deeply flawed one at that, with a relentless desire to write. And so I ascribe to the idea that I am but a vessel, when I show up to my part of the job, a scribe for the divine spark, whatever it wants to express. Of course, the messages of that genius will reflect myself and my quirks, tendencies - the way I view the world. The spark, after all, must travel through my body, my mind, my filter.
I once read Donald Miller talking about the hundreds of coffee shops in Portland, Oregon, which he frequented for his writing sessions. He set a word-count (I believe it was 1,000) that he had to reach before he could stop writing. If he did not reach it in the time he had allotted for writing, then that coffee shop was "blacklisted," never again to be visited for writing. Perhaps it was just that, on those particular days, Donald Miller simply did not have it in him to write that much. Perhaps he did not get enough sleep the night before or had a fight with his girlfriend and that kept him from hitting 1,000 words. Or perhaps it is possible that the genius inhabiting the walls of that particular failed coffee shop was not a very good one. Or perhaps it was busy talking to another creative mind, longing to be expressed by an expectant pen, brush, or tongue. Now, Donald Miller can afford to do this because he lives in Portland - we only have one coffee shop in Boiling Springs. Luckily, the genius there has done well for me.
But I have felt this - this disembodied inspiration from somewhere else entirely, helping me to express that which I would never have imagined expressing. Where did that come from? I didn't know that I knew that. And it is moments like these and ideas like this one that make me realize that I need to write more, to make my pen or fingers or even voice available to allow the divine spark to find its expression, to harness that creative energy that is part me, part genius. It is in that physical manifestation of the indefinable where work and art begin to mingle.
No comments:
Post a Comment