Where inspiration comes from

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Inspiration, where does it come from?


When inspiration strikes we are often surprised by what comes out of it. A glimpse of the impossible turning into possible, a notion of magic at work. Where does it come from? When does it happen, can it be called forth?

The spark that elevates a piece of art in progress from "it's a start" to having that special "wow" effect, the piece of writing that starts running a chill down your spine or the piece of music that suddenly starts to sing in more ways than just as being a string of notes - or even  the breakthrough of a science research. All of that to my experience has one and the same Source. It comes from the space that exists between our thoughts. Thoughts combine, compare and process only existing facts, experiences and interpretations of things and events that happen in our lives.

They do not lead us deeper than that. It is when we open ourselves up and allow the stream of constant thought to cease, just maybe for a little bit. Then we can tap into deeper layers of existence. In a way it means that you need to be literally "out of your mind" - even if that means only for a second. There is a joy of simple being hidden under the noisy chatter of thoughts that are constantly moving through our minds. Allow yourself to be without thought. Open up to possibilities you never considered before, stand still in the middle of a rush hour of thought traffic and put the mind's control over your perceptions to rest. You will discover that there is more to your existence than what can be grasped with one's mind.

Inspiration comes out of no-mind, many great pieces of art, writing, music, or scientific discoveries have been done when it was least expected, not thought about, not planned or brought forth by a strategy. In our creative process we are channeling new ideas from a deeper place within us, a depth that connects us all, the source energy in motion that propels all life. All we need to do is to embrace this tremendous source, turn off our thoughts every once in a while and act in gratitude.

There are many things that may help to get closer to being inspired and there are people as well, we can call them muses. I can call myself incredibly fortunate to share my life with such a muse, a genius and artist herself. Angi founded the Duirwaigh Gallery featuring myth-poetic art in 1999 and has since inspired many artists to do their grandest work so far - but she also has another even more important message which is: Make not only great art, turn your life into a work of art!

(Angi has a blog dedicated to living an inspired life which is called "Message from the Muse" and can be found here messagefromthemuse.typepad.com. She also recently wrote a book, Duirwaighs and Dreamfields and you can find a few excerpts on Duirwaigh Gallery, here www.duirwaighgallery.com/inspi…. Her DA page is here messagefromthemuse.deviantart.…)


By using the comment feature of this blog I invite you to share your experiences of a noteworthy occasion when a moment of particular inspiration surprised you.


About


Current Residence: This world, and that.
Interests: Art, Illustration, Graphic Design, Music and Music Composition.
Favourite movies: Wings of Desire, Company of Wolves, Far Away so Close, Cinema Paradiso, The Postman, Lord of the Rings Trilogy, Moonstruck, Autumn Spring, Baron Münchhausen and more...
Favourite band or music: There is so much... Mahler, Dvorak, Bruckner, Wagner, Richard Strauss, Schubert, Bach, Chopin... Globus, Vangelis, Hans Zimmer, Yes...
Favourite genre of music: Classical, Progressive Rock, New Age, Soundtrack, (vintage) Electronica...
Favourite artist: Mucha and almost all of the art nouveau, Preraphaelites, the old Fairy Tale illustrators...
Favourite poet or writer: John Crowley, Guy Gavriel Kay, Angi Sullins, Hans Bemmann, Rilke, Rumi and much more...
Operating System & Tools of the Trade: Mac OSX, Pencil, G5, Photoshop, Wacom, Logic, hard & soft synths, sample libraries and other magic items.


© 2007 - 2024 DuirwaighStudios
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Foxfires's avatar
What a wonderful read that was. I will chime in, but not with a story of a particular instance of inspiration creating art, but rather inspiration reclaiming creativity.

I have always been an artist. Whether that was sitting at my grandmother's table with butcher paper and crayons, or at school creating pieces that the teacher kept as examples of perfect work for future classes. Whenever there was an art project to be done, everyone started pointing in my direction saying "Aimee will do it!" I poured my heart into the worlds I could create with my imagination. At the same time, I was also a musician. Starting at a young age, I studied classical piano until I was playing twenty page sonatas with my eyes closed. I played clarinet for almost the same amount of time, until I reached 'first chair' in band class... and held that title for four years straight. I balanced those two passions with ease. Music was the air in my lungs, and art was the blood in my heart. Between the concerts and recitals, and the artistic endeavors that had me winning contests and volunteering for projects, I was happy and fulfilled. I would go home and play my cherished walnut baby grand that my parents had bought as a gift for me years earlier, and feel inspiration swirl around me with every note.

Unfortunately, two very major things worked against me gaining any sort of advantage in the art or music world. One, my parents did not have the money to send me to college. I grew up knowing that it simply was not an option, and so I didn't even really know enough to be disappointed. It was what it was. Second, the small town school that I had attended since kindergarten was focused on sports, not music... so there was no mention made of scholarships that might be available to me.

So when all of my peers were stressing about their grades, and what colleges they were going to attend... I remember roaming the halls with an extreme sense of calmness in the middle of the storm. When it came time for our SAT tests, I simply checked the boxes the same through all the pages, and turned the papers in five minutes after the testing began. I walked out of the gymnasium crowded with long lunch tables and kids hunched over, madly scribbling with their #2 pencils... and never looked back.

After graduation, everything fell silent. Life came at me full force, and the reality of living in a small orchard town quickly presented itself. While others in my class were packing up to head off to higher learning, I was applying for a job as an apple sorter in a tin roof fruit shed.

I fell into a routine of life and work. My sketch books and pens stayed in the back of the closet, and the piano I had spent a good portion of my life at sat like a big dust collector in the family living room. I didn't even have the heart to look at it as I walked out the door to work. And when I came back home, the only energy I had went to making dinner, and trying not to fall asleep on the couch while the TV droned on.

In about a year, I got married. We moved into a tiny one bedroom apartment in a town ten miles away. Life churned forward. I kept thinking that at some point, I would have time to delve back into my artwork, my music... but every day pushed it off a little further. Like all young couples, we struggled with finances. I kept working. Kept coming home exhausted. Kept pushing my creativity into the background. But the glimmer of 'someday' still shined.

That is why I was devastated when I called home one day after my parents seperated... and my mother told me that my father had taken the piano with him, and sold it.

All my strength left. I sank to the floor and sobbed into my hands. It felt as if my best friend had died. That piano had been my inheritance. It had been the muse that sang to me, and told me tales of beauty so that I could sit down and draw them. And now... it was gone. Sold for a trifle of what it was worth. Priceless to me.... $2,000 in my father's pocket.

I hated him then. The anger boiled. It wasn't just a piano he sold... it was my dreams. The assurance that someday, I was going to place that piano in my own home and play again. The sense of betrayal was overwhelming. But it was nothing compared to what I felt when word got back to me that he had been talking around town about why he sold the piano in the first place. He had been telling people that I was a 'waste of his money.' That he had paid for piano lessons all those years, and now I didn't even have the decency to play anymore. That I wasn't pursuing art, I wasn't pursuing music, and that he had simply thrown all that cash down the drain. So, in his mind, this at least paid him back a little bit.

There are times in a person's life when certain words ring forever in the ears. And to think, they were spoken by the man who never attended a single recital... a single concert. Never saw me perform those twenty page sonatas by heart. Never sat in the audience to give an encouraging smile. Never took a moment to look at my artwork and suggest that I should at least apply for a grant, or a scholarship.

So I fell into a deep depression. I started to believe that I was worthless as far as my creativity was concerned. I couldn't bring myself to draw anything. I couldn't even hear a piano being played without tears welling up instantly. Every time I came close to reaching out for inspiration, his words would grate through my mind, and send me recoiling. I put on weight. When I wasn't working, I would sleep until noon. My poor husband did what he could, but I just kept going through the motions.

Then one day...it was as if I blinked my eyes and woke up from a long dream. I was sitting at an apple sorting table in the packing shed, and the heat was a sweltering 120 degrees. Someone had just walked up behind me and dumped a coffee can filled with icewater down my back to cool me off. I glanced up at the sallow skinned women on the other side of the table, with damp dirty rags tied around their heads to keep the sweat out of their eyes. They weren't that old, but looked as if they had already lived two lifetimes. Their hands moved across the rolling table, rhuemy eyes endlessly scanning the apples as they bobbed forward along the line. All of their wrists were braced to help with the pain from years of repetative work. Their knuckles were knobbed, their skin discolored from the hot wax they touched day after day. Then I looked down at my own hands. Fingers that I had pampered for so many years, not risking injury to the very things that afforded me my art. Now they were calloused, rough, covered in hard apple wax. My knuckles were stiff. My wrists ached. My cuticles were torn, and my nails were bitten to the quick.

They were so ugly I had to choke back the tears. But it wasn't just the physical state they were in. They represented everything that I had let slip away, and I knew it. In that moment I realized that I had allowed myself to be a virtual prisoner of someone else's careless words and actions. I had let the bitterness close my heart to the muse, and life's worries to steamroll over my very own sanctuary. And up until that very moment, I had forgotten the fact that I held the key to it all. All I had to do was turn the lock, and swing that door wide open again.

I walked out of that tin roof shed at the end of the day with a new vision. It was all temporary. That job was temporary. My sorrow was temporary. The sting of my father's behavior was temporary. The thing that was permanently woven into my soul was my creativity. The muse was forever. And as soon as I remembered that, the forgiveness came easy. The warmth returned to my heart. The pens and paper came back out of the closet. Music started to play again. I refused to let the mundane tasks of life define my soul. It was all just a means to an end. No matter what my father thought of me... the art and music was in me from the very beginning, even if he had never spent a dime.

So I never had the opportunity to study art in college, and somewhere in this world...my baby grand piano sings to someone else. But that's okay. Neither of those things keep me from sharing my dreams through art now. And all I have to do is close my eyes and imagine my hands hovering there covered in apple wax and grime to know that I will never, ever listen to the muse halfheartedly again.