the thing about inspiration

The problem with writing is that you really can't force yourself to do it. Well, I guess you can, it's just that it turns out being meshes of words and strings that make little poetry or hardly evoke those deeper cells of your heart, if you're forcing.
I've wanted to write many times over the past couple of weeks and months. One day I'm walking downtown Placerville after a 45 minute catch-up session with TIME Magazine and Entertainment Weekly, and suddenly I have this spectacular blog spinning a web of thoughts inside my head. Word combinations like "lately I've been having really Big Thoughts" or "Beatty's are evolving into a band of history-making artistic trailblazers", these and more, and me trucking with my white breath through the streets of downtown Placerville.
The problem, again, is that when the time comes to write you just can't force it. When the computer seat is finally vacant for you, and the house has silenced just enough for you to think - you can't really save inspiration for the right time. You sort of need to act on it immediately (IE whip out the journal and jot down that quote you just thought of, take a picture of that scenery you are staring at, press on the video mode and capture the whole string of things in front of you). It happens all too quickly, and you can't save your inspired moments for later when writing or capturing or realizing is "more convenient." This is how the whole of learning has gone for me, always. None of us plan how we are going to learn, it has to happen naturally and we are the receivers, allowing our minds and bodies to adapt and change accordingly.

"Hmm, what do I want to learn today?" or "what memories will I create today?"

We're all a sort of refined memory-making machines. And you know what, I have it down to a science. I think I understand that we aren't in charge of actually creating moments that happen, but (more importantly) we are in total control over how those moments come to be. We're human beings, with complex capabilities for achievement far beyond most creatures, we independently are capable of manipulating our environments however we please to breath life into a particular order of events. In other words, we may not be able to control randomness in nature, but we definitely have control over all those other factors that lead up to nature's Final Say.

You wake up one morning and say to yourself, "what do I want to experience today?" Can you force that experience to come? Not if nature has the final say. Instead you manipulate everyting else, all aspects of your experience so that nature will provide an experience however it chooses, accordingly. But it's up to you to take the initiatve. Whether to go on an adventure, to plan a big-booty party, to buy christmas presents, to plan a camping trip, to drive yourself to Los Angeles, to audition, to play music, to say hello to a stranger, to write, to photograph, to capture, to observe, to think, to love everything independently; if you take that initiative, then Nature will dictate something beautiful, outside your head and into reality. You can't force inspiration, but you control all other aspects that lead to it, so that when the moment comes and nature's had her Final Say, you sit in front of your computer with hundreds of heavy witty fancy dirty funny junky christmasy new yorky travely penguiny friendly family-loving child-hugging rapping singing baby-kissing food-tasting vomit-heaving late-sleeping snowboarding car-freezing wiper-smearing brother-laughing cat-cuddly rain-strolling sister-crying phone-talking late-night movie-editing peaceful-sleepy marriage-loving motherly heavenly terrible wonderful hot and cold and inbetween thoughts in your head.. you will have so many places to go to begin writing that maybe you never even really can get started.



Well that's it for now. Maybe next time I'll write something inspired. ;-) seeya.
*Mikie