This reflection was in response to an essay written by my previous Drawing teacher, Craig Coss, on inspiration.
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For me, inspiration always has a living component, where it can “breathe air.” Taking up the quadrants of a room; touching people and activating space; moving with some kind of inhale, through the spine and ribcage.
I think the most inspired moments “animate” (bring life to) the body. Often time, those moments never even touch a performance stage or a frame in a gallery.
In [a referenced video of musician Martin Hayes], the way the performance activates the audience and the audience activates the performers, I'm left believing that inspiration is relational — a co-created event. Even with [Elizabeth Gilbert’s TED talk on creative genius], the way her words organically travel through her and weave into the air feels “inspired" to me.
I realize inspiration is often referred to as a kind of force or a life spirit that “strikes” at a given moment. Perhaps this is due to previous humbling years — but in contrast to “rushes” of life, I also think about cycles, endings, dyings. I think inspiration is often idealized as a lightning strike, spurring momentum into a wildfire of creation. But that is not always realistic, or sustainable.
Sometimes days are precarious and bones are fragile. Sometimes the body is held by illness. The pain of loved ones passing. Fears over where the next bomb lands. Then what? Where is the spirit of inspiration then?
I think inspiration can also be quiet, subtle, oblique. Surfacing in simple things that keep us alive and sustain us. Remembering a bedtime story, or the feeling of your childhood dog’s fur; rereading a loved novel to escape working; seeking refuge every week at the local park; drawing fanart of your favorite characters. A sentence spoken to you ten years ago, which your mind has long forgotten, but your body remembers the shape of being moved by.
I want to believe that inspiration is not always a sudden flash that arrives here, now, hurry! if you don't catch it, it will disappear into forever. That is so scarce.
I think, if a thing has genuinely moved, activated and “inspired” you, even in the smallest ways—it never truly leaves you. It sinks beneath the skin—through the flesh, down to the bone. In this way it travels with you, for months, years, decades.
And every so often, when you find yourself touched or inspired by something new, it vibrates some forgotten bone—creating quiet earthquakes beneath the skin, and moving your body in ways that feel simultaneously very new, and very, very old.