Inspiration
My latest inspiration came from a couple of close friends of mine who inspire me in different ways to “stay the course” on long endeavors like writing a novel. One is a rather smart woman I admire for many reasons, she sends me tiny visual tidbits when I’m past my deadline for writing my blog that are meant to provoke me to action. Here’s one of them from her recently (I share because I like the visual pull):
“Having expected some and gotten none, the hand apathetically withdraws back into darkness…”
And another:
“A mild whimper grew in intensity until it reached the crescendo of loud wails…”
I sure didn’t want the image to get any worse, so I stopped my life a bit and sat down to write this. After all, I all ready had a rather good day getting my other projects done, chapter 11 of my novel is well under way and my cooperative art project has been added to.
Another inspiring woman (and I really mean that) has been taking my creative “intention” and making me accountable for it. We recently signed a pact for a deadline for our individual creative projects - an exciting and grueling co-commitment. It’s a pact after all, worlds will explode if we don’t come through.
I tend to have many paths for my creativity to express itself. They are tied around a few mainstays of my personal identity: writing, art, and guiding my fellow martial artists to new physical, and in some, spiritual, heights. Breaking that down:
Training people for physical individual expression is challenging and rewarding. You have sets of rules you have to follow, physics for one, where you have no say in the matter as far as physical constants, range of motion, or mass and inertia are concerned. And then there are functional body mechanics, refining one to standards of efficiency, or doing the most with the least. Beyond that it’s taking what is before you, the individual, finding out what they bring to the table and then helping them free themselves from some of their mental and physical restraints (self or other imposed) so they can function fluidly with another creating individual. Elements of chess, physics, and freedom of expression combine to make a statement of the creative self. It isn’t about hitting or throwing or kicking. It’s about living and dynamically creating in the present. The worries of life surrounding training disappear and one is taught to immerse in the present.
Writing is an immersion in a kernel of thought/visual that blossoms into a visual/emotional/textural expression of characters and story. In my head it’s wonderful, powerful, a vast expanse of world-shaking creation. On paper, on screen, I have to connect my words to my immersion so that everyone else can see, and hopefully I convey it with enough practiced connection that what I see and feel internally gets shared with some accuracy.
In art there are two forms of expression I am currently involved in. Figure drawing and…Anashun. Don’t bother looking up Anashun, I made up the word (poetic creative license remember? An amalgam of Anna and Shaun) to describe a particular freeform drawing experience shared by two artists - the results are pretty awesome (at least we think they’re nifty).
Figure drawing is taking in what’s before me, connecting to some internal mechanism that exists completely in the present, and then drawing on paper what I see. The process is an un-encumbering of what I experience in the rest of my daily life. The critic is silenced, the world shuts out, and I…well, sometimes I hum. I’m silent enough that I don’t bother anyone else, but what can I say, the body does it’s own thing when I shed my attention of time.
Anashun is taking what someone else has started and growing from that. The internal mechanism is different than figure drawing. Figure drawing has rules of line and proportion, Anashun has one rule (well, two if you add the 25 minute time limit), you must branch off of what has been drawn (essentially a refined doodle). From there your mind takes in the visual, intuits your own connected creative tie, flavors it with your individual expression, and then draws. Absorbs the newness of the combined. And draws. The immersion is wonderful and very time-shedding. The end product is…well, for us at least, inspiring. We’re branching into other modalities too. You work 25 minutes with it, pass it to the other artist and then they get it back to you a day or a week later when they’ve added to it. Quite interesting what two creative minds can express in relation to another.
Isn’t that what it’s all about though? How we all connect, share, create, and then express anew? That’s what inspiration is about, a shared experience. Whether that experience is witnessing the way sunlight plays on water mist, a child’s laughter, processing a complex math equation, or just you going about your life being true to yourself and expressing that truth freely. That’s inspiring. And that’s world-changing when we share it.
I have inspiring people prodding me to new heights, truly wonderful people who share a tie to me that is supportive and bleeds creative. I am fortunate, and I let them know it frequently by thanking them in some way. What they inspire me to do inspires them and others.
Thank the people around you who inspire you in some way, if even with just a touch on the arm or a wonderful, heartfelt smile. That smile can make someone’s day, and someone else’s, and on and on. A ripple effect of the positive.
Inspiration doesn’t work if it isn’t out there working.
