Imagination – What Inspires You?
I have lived so many lives all in my head – I Do Not Want This by Nine Inch Nails
I’ve got my feet on the ground but I don’t go to sleep to dream – I Don’t Go to Sleep to Dream by Fiona Apple
For me the quoted lyrics above could not be more true. Since I was a wee lass, I have had a vivid imagination. At times, too vivid.
Case in point. I was six years old and loved riding my bike. The wind on my face, the thrill of going downhill and that ultimate feeling of freedom from my parents. One summer afternoon I hopped on my bike without any shoes. Somehow, during the course of my riding, I caught my foot in the back wheel. Oh hello, nearly severed toe. I peddled back to the house where I crawled up on the lawn and yelled for my mom. In what was a very brief amount of time two things happened: I decided my little accident was embarrassing and I fabricated an elaborate story to cover up the truth. I guess six year old me felt pride was at stake for some silly reason. The story I concocted isn’t important where I’m going is this: that one small moment, when I caught my toe in the bike spoke, ended up influencing the imagination. (No, I am not condoning lying, but I was six and I eventually came clean to my parents.)
Since those formative, wild and free years I have come to be inspired by less traumatic, every day things. Take the other day, for instance. I live in a very snowy area and I was watching the giant icicles melting in the sun. Just the way the water glistened as it slid lazily down the sides of mammoth icicles inspired poetry to float through my mind.
Sometimes I’m struck while driving, listening to a song I’ve heard hundreds of a times, a line standing out in the moment and leading to a creative spurt. This demonstrates just how important timing is, just as much as the device of inspiration.
And still…there’s more. Pictures, movies, personal tragedies, moving biopics – all have served as gateways to inspirational moments for me. Some of my best ideas come to me while hiking or working out.
What inspires you to write or express yourself creatively through art, music or other mediums?
What are some of the moments that caught you off guard and found you in a frenzy, unable to apply your creativity quickly enough?
The possibilities are endless…just sayin.
Inspiration usually hits me after the fact. I can be doing something or hear something or watch something and nothing. Then next thing I know I will be in the middles of something and a moment from that will hit me and I am inspired. I am a very visual person so images inspire me most.
I uaually am driving when something hits me, and then I am scrambling for my iphone to leave myself a voice memo to remind myself later of my inspirational thought.
Music probably inspires my writing more than anything. The last two ff’s I’ve written, and the OF I have bouncing around in my head have all been inspired by music lyrics. I too have always had quite a vivid imagination. Around the age of five, I had two imaginary friends, BamBam and Carmichale (don’t ask me how a five year old came up with those names).
I can think of the moment that the idea of “Lost and Found” came to me with vivid clarity. I was sitting in the parking lot of the grocery store, when a song came on the radio. The idea bounced around in my head all day, and that night as I lay in bed, it came together so suddenly I had to get up and write it all down. Since then, I always keep a notepad beside the bed and in my purse, just in case inspiration strikes when I’m not near my computer.