What breathes life in us? What inspires us? I know for myself, just meeting a pretty girl at times inspires me to poetry, even if we share nothing else but a handshake and a look. Intellectually, I like watching the first part of A Beautiful Mind, up to where John Nash has his revelation in the bar about how he and his friends can all get laid that night — he too, here, inspired by a pretty face. That scene gives me hope that I will be so struck, at perhaps a random place: it is the hope of unexpected insight. Then there is when I stress, sometimes to come up with remarkable things, but I am no good for anything else at those times. The tension focuses me in on a certain problem, but it is to the exclusion of everything else. And, many a time, it is music that sparks the idea centers of my mind; music that lifts me to the heights of cognition, to at atmosphere where I may take a view normally missed.
I take it as it comes, or at least I try to. I wish for inspiration at some junctures when it seems only to trickle or not come at all, and there are times (less frequent) when some idea hits and I have nothing to write it down with. I like to prepare for when it hits, especially to prevent those latter experiences. I am getting better at realizing that things that seem so clear when I think of them initially fade in my memory, until I cannot come up with the original thought any more, just left with some side imprint of how magnificent it must have been.... I guess no one knows just why at times inspiration strikes us, and why at other points we are left bankrupt of all ideas. Just something in the air, something in our sight or smell: something of a magic invades us from time to time, the muse interrupts our regular programming with a special bulletin, and for a brief moment it is as if we touch the infinite and understand.
