“What inspires you?” This free answer question is asked in hopes of unlocking the secrets of creative genius. What makes you excited to live life to the fullest, to create original works of art, to make a difference in this world? Wow, what inspires you? Asking the question is inspiring in itself, as it gets the mind cranking, striving for innovative new projects! We should share our secrets of inspiration, to fuel each other and propel society forward. Our ideas bouncing off each other like heated molecules; smashing, breaking, and joining to create new organisms. Oh inspiration is such a wonderful concept! A natural drug from our subconscious to give us energy and purpose. I want it, I want to crush it up, cook it on foil and suck it in. What inspires you?
Nothing.
You aren’t inspired, and neither am I. Hardly any of us are truly inspired, remotely creative, or will ever make a difference in this world. The only thing that gets us out of bed is the end of sleep, or maybe obligation. Have you ever said “Eureka” and meant it? Our lives are marked by rainbows of mediocrity. Our activities go up and down a spectrum of fun and creativity. We certainly like stuff and we may be passionate for brief periods, but we never break out of the standard ROYGBIV of life to an ultraviolet ray of inspiration. Do you think your rainbow is any different than mine? They have the same colors in the same order, so their equivalence makes what seemed to be a beautiful phenomenon, just a mundane occurrence. This is the nature of what you thought was inspirational, a mass produced rainbow standard soaring across the sky into an non-existent pot of gold.
I don’t mean that no one has ever been inspired. At one point people first told the stories that are currently recycled over and again by the modern creative duds we call writers. There was an original tale of star-crossed lovers, a first Science-Fiction epic about people and places so exotic they could only have come from a deep pool of inspired genius. Someone first harnessed the awesome power of nature with a hydroelectric dam. “The Internet” came from someone’s Eureka moment. Inspiration happens, just only to a very small number of people. Then cut that amount even smaller by subtracting out those who didn’t have the means to act upon their inspiration, or who had it crapped on and buried by naysayers.
Don’t forget about the inspiration of evil. “What inspires you?” can conjure up all sorts of muses for murder and mayhem. Hitler was inspired by something, so was Jeffrey Dahmer. They both broke out of the typical middle class mold to do something daring and different, and unequivocally horrible. Thankfully the vast majority of us are equally void of evil inspiration as we are of wonderful inspiration. I apologize for not getting out bed to make your life more exciting, but at least I won’t wear your face like a mask.
People don’t realize they’re boring and unoriginal, so they ask and answer the question “What inspires you?” They think their kids and their loves and such are the source of amazing things that they do on a regular basis. They think they make a difference each day by putting one foot in front of the other, extending basic courtesy to strangers, and dreaming big. But dreams aren’t inspiration either, they are what we imagine inspiration to be like, our life fantasies fulfilled. So instead of asking the cliché, I’ll ask you, “What makes you a self-absorbed fuck?”
