The Elusiveness of Inspiration

Because I do not know, I imagine & this often serves as fact.

There are times when the world imagination feels engorged. I have over-stimulated—watched too many films, listened to one particular album too often, run the same memory-scenes too obsessively. It is during these times when I feel exasperated by the mind’s antics, Then something will come along, quietly but definitively & shift the scene.

A new aspect will emerge from a stretched landscape & this fresh perspective will serve to expand what had earlier been a fixation, a jam. The mind is once again free to explore.

For writers, is it possible to train the mind’s eye the way a painter does when they re-create an image from imagination? Can the luxurious flow of words be frozen in a space of reason so we are permitted a closer look at something revealed mentally? Is it possible to rewind the free-style scenes in order to review a previous sequence for another opportunity to record something missed or obscured in the first viewing?

How do we suspend scenes in the mind?

Like breakwater heading towards a shore, I spy something; a general note is recorded. If focus sustains, the image will draw closer, the path undulating like a wave. Each time it approaches, I notice something new; this is recorded & I look again. Sometimes the original image will have dissolved completely, other times it clarifies further. I beckon the instance forward, where it enters the currents of imagination. If successful in capturing this action, it's mine & those recorded details are preserved as connective threads into a story. In the same fashion that we are flattered by attention & tend to reserve those excitements for later appreciation, I will save these images, content that they chose me.

I have been known to hoard inspiration.

{Images by Salomon Trismosin}