Monday, February 14, 2011

Where does inspiration come from?

"An apple assed half appalosssa named Alice got booed 'cause she pooed in the back of the palace".

That is what one of my good friends, a musician, used to say in college.

His brother. also a muscician, used to say things like "Time to change my life, lay down some roots...makin' love in lizard skin boots".

Ah, college and the stupid things we used to say. But, these were the people who set the example for me to become a writer...musicians.

But, whether you are a musician or a writer, inspiration is a difficult thing. Where does it come from and, more importantly, how doe you harness it once it arrives?

Most of my drafts look something like this...

I wanted to give Magda the stars in the sky and over the next few weeks I continued searching for a present for her. Though I continued looking for something for Magda over the next few weeks, it was no use. I wanted to give her the stars in the sky. But, I could find nothing, no matter how expensive it might be, that symbolized my true feelings for her. And so Chjristmas came and went and though I gave her something, it was nothing meaningful. PORTRAY HIS LOVE FOR HER AND THE THINGS SHE DOES.

The 12 days of Christmas, the bright fires, the yule log, the giving of gifts, carnivals(parades) with floats, carolers who sing while going from house to house, the holiday feasts, and the church processions can all be traced back to the early Mesopotamians.

Many of these traditions began with the Mesopotamian celebration of New Years. The Mesopotamians believed in many gods, and as their chief god - Marduk. Each year as winter arrived it was believed that Marduk would do battle with the monsters of chaos. To assist Marduk in his struggle the Mesopotamians held a festival for the New Year. This was Zagmuk, the New Year's festival that lasted for 12 days.

The sun is the king of time. But, day after day the sun sank lower and lower in the sky like the nodding head of an afed king whose crown had grown too heavy. To the ancients, Magda said, the sun was the one true God himself, the merciful source of all life, of all our blessings and everything we hold dear. So, it was cause for great concern when the radiance of the almighty grew weaker and the night grew longer and longer as if they would soon be swallowed by the universe itself.

...literary detritus, driftwood that has washed up on the shores of my mind. It means something, I just don't know what and it's my job, our job as writers, to translate these impulses and images that arise from the subconscious into something palateble for the masses.

Even though I am a novelist, I have always had an easier time writing poetry. It might take me 25 drafts to figure out what to do with all the disparate images that accumulate on the sea shore of my mind but, after reading Alan Ginsburg's Howl just once I said to myself "I can do that" and, in 15 minutes wrote.

The King is Dead!
And right and left, left and right,
upon two ragged and separating shoes,
the news is carried through the dying light.
The king is dead! The king is dead!
The word is muttered. It is said.
The word is heard but, like a ball
thrown into the wallless void beyond,
there is no customary response and call
proclaiming the sovereignty of the son.

With the click and the kick of Anarchy's gun
the lid slams shut upon the eye
and sends the regal orb a'rolling
down the pyramid's widening walls.
As in a pinball slot, or a ball gone bowling,
it wends its way upon a splitting fissure until finally it
falls
into the void
scattering pins and people in the sunken sun.

And I ponder now the point of a pyramid
who's very reason for being is pointless.

A multitude of headless chickens react and race,
like contracting atoms,
about the yard to cluck and call.
"The sky is falling! The sky is falling!"
No, not really.
But the universe, it is true,
at least as far as I can tell,
is shrinking,
and no longer extends beyond the finite boundaries
of a mess of mortal organs
wrapped in human skin.

The king is dead and we are
split,
like atoms,
by a trickster god.
You and I become me and you.
And hark!
Who goes there in the night?
One is black and one is white...
but only in the other's eyes.

And who is wrong  and who is right?

Who can judge now that our ruler's lost
and Juliet would be a son
and not a daughter?
We've tossed the truth out with the water
and got each other's reasons crossed,
like the hairy legs of a woman
trapped inside the body of a man.

The king is dead!

The word filters through our window
from the senseless central boulevard.
The word is spoken.
It is barked and bleated 'round our table
as our father's words are now taken as a token
to spend on candy and cheap diversions
before each and every frustrated one of us
separates for bed.

Dissenting thoughts now fill the heads of man and wife.
We chant our mantras beneath closed coffin lids
before each of us, coming to his and her own conclusion,
rolls away from the empty center of the marriage bed,
and satisfied,
we turn out the light.
And continue rolling,
and continue rolling,
and roll away into the expanding night...

Great, yet another piece of driftwood that I have to figure out how to fit into a novel.

I worked for years, hammering these things into a home, something presentable that I could show another reader. And, it literally took years before I had a draft that would make even the slightest bit of sense to someone other than me and the two or three other people who seemed to have taken up residence in my head in the time since I had begun writing. Know the feeling?

But, here is the thing. Human beings are physical manifestations of the universal mind, that great collective unconscious that we swim in when we dream. Most people don't realize this or, if they do, they don't care. Inspiration is all around us, we can't help but step in it like cow pies in a farmer's field. As artists, writers, musicians, whatever we have asssumed the task of taking this wift of wind called inspiration and crafting something that the rest of our species can understand. We are the translators of dreams. And our task is to determine what has meaning and what doesn't. That is why the poem above eventually made it into The Vagabond King...but so did the apples assed half appalossa named Alice.

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