How does one jump-start a brain? What can be used to jolt it from the comfortable but boring quotidian cycle of existence-consumption-sleep?
I can see how the notion of Muses came about. Its easy to attribute our flashes of brilliance to some capricious being with the power to bestow inspiration, and who, upon a whim, sends a flash of insight such that creativity is engendered in the recipient.
And then, when the Muse so wishes, she withdraws her favours, leaving us bereft of ideas and confused as to why the inside of our heads contain only lumpen prosaic tasks. That's muses for you! Changeable and mischevous. Indeed, inspiration does seem to be unfathomably mercurial. Sorry, I am mixing up my Greek deities now.
And so, inside their bony dome, 100,000,000,000 neurons all sit idly twiddling their axons and not a one of them is able to scintillate a thought into a creative act worthy of expression.
Time was when thoughts would strike me on a regular basis. It was as if they floated freely and formlessly through the air looking for a mind to occupy and finding one responsive, would fly in through the ear and head straight between the temples. There they would martial the imagination's resources like a conductor of an orchestra and before long a whole symphony of whimsy would be playing, longing for an audience.
And today: Silence. No ideas appear, no sparks ignite. Surely there must be material aplenty? Every day, humanity excels itself with heroic deeds and acts of epic stupidity. Autumn colours reluctantly appear on some trees following the examples of others who got the hint earlier and threw themselves into enthusiastic displays of dazzling oranges, reds and yellows. The world is full of that which ought to sparkle and inspire.
But no, Facts are appraised, trees regarded and still the mind won't fire.
Its dull. I bore myself. What can I do?
Philosophical observations from wandering about noticing things.
4 comments:
It seems to be a recurrent theme for you, looking at past blog entries of yours. So, what did the trick in the past?
correspondence. Writing. That kind of thing.
Hi There,
Maybe I should read your other posts first, but I am working from top to bottom.
I've self-diagnosed myself as mildly bi-polar. I'm either bursting with ideas, starting myriad projects, rushing around talking to all and sundry, or sitting, mute, enveloped in a dark world of entropy.
Embrace this period of stillness, a rush of chaos is ahead. We bloggers are all slightly narcissistic. Soon you'll be wrapped up in the lives of strangers, ideas bouncing around. Massaging others' egos always helps, inspiration bounces back in the form of returned fawning, agree?
Well, it could be an ego thing or it could just be the fact that the world no longer just has a line for a horizon, but is peopled beyond that limit with characters whose minds have been, to a small degree, shown to us. Something about human contact, be it textual or actual, is irreducibly important to humans. The pragmatic emails pertaining to details of life that need arranging are contact, but not really in any way inspirational. An opinion, or an observation that someone has made that has neve occurred to you can be immensely satisfying when it pops up on your screen intended for you. No idea why. Like I said: Its irreducible. But yes, marcissistic I have to agree with. And unashamedly so.
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