Rambling about inspiration and dreams
I recently published a post where I raised the question of how to recover inspiration about an idea after some time has passed. I didn't really conclude anything and my mind has been thinking about it ever since, feeling as if somehow I left a loose end, itching to explore other possible avenues.
So, here we are!
I've been specifically thinking about where inspiration comes from, and where does it go to once it's gone. Inspiration as a phenomena is hardly logical, manifesting itself as a fever to do something. In my mind both inspiration and dreams have a similar flavor, so we'll start there.
There was a time when I was very disciplined about keeping a dream journal. I learned early that to properly recall a dream one needs not try to remember the whole thing directly, instead one needs to identify and hold on to what I call a set of hooks that serve as fishing lines for the actual dream. These hooks can be anything from the dream that you feel it's important (sounds, sights, feelings, etc).
When we wake up, our conscious mind tends to take our memories of the dream and reason about them, it masticates them into a reductive representation. But if instead we stop and try to individuate the hooks early on then we can later pull on those and have larger parts of the dream(s) unfold.
I could talk more about dreaming and dream journaling (and might actually make a post about it in the future since it's a fun topic), but I don't want to get distracted from what's important here: the hooks.
I feel the relationship between creating and inspiration is very similar to pulling on a hook and have the memory of a dream simply spill into your mind. When you're inspired things just flow, a torrent of ideas fighting to get out. In both cases you're opening a door into a part of your mind that's just full to the brim with stuff and, most importantly, that part is not directly accessible to your conscious/analytical mind, instead information flow just sort of happens by itself.
Once inspiration is gone it is very hard to get it back (or at least it is for me). I wonder if there are also a set of hooks one can use to link creator and muse?
As an example: I'm a developer by profession, and I love to make programs. I also think there's a deeply creative aspect to it, ranging from how you structure everything to the solutions you apply to the problems that arise on your way. When programming, I know there's inspiration involved. However, there's an important difference with respect to writing: I'm able to leave a programming project and then come back to it many weeks later and quickly recover the inspiration. Why is that?
I think that for one there are a lot of things in programming on which the conscious analytical mind can munch on, which will invariably attract the attention of the intuitive subconscious (both will end up focused on the same task). There're also a lot of props involved, which work as channelers of attention. For example, each person has its own set of tools they like to use, code editors, and even their color schemes, keyboard layouts and shortcuts (and a myriad other things), all of which can be seen as artifacts whose goal is that of helping to focus the inner eye. We experience a sort of pleasure when working with them, and through pleasure we pull the focus of the whole mind unto the problem at hand.
I think one can find parallels to this in many other areas of human activity.
Fortune tellers have their canonical misty ambiance, with a crystal ball or other similarly mystical object. In a meditation room decorations are usually pretty minimalistic, with a small altar or incense burner as the only focus of attention. Even writers have access to a plethora of rich papers, notebooks, pens, and even word processors. All of these have the goal of kindling a sense of awe in the person that's inhabiting these spaces, and our conscious analytical mind reacts to awe in the same way a moth to a candle: it can't help being drawn to it.
Besides awe there's also the sensorial pleasure that these things bring. Both conspire to create the same effect: make the analytical mind focus on the shiny things, whilst at the same time creating a space for the now unencumbered subconscious to bubble up through the cracks. In other words: it inspires us (literally makes inspiration happen).
I think with writing, inspiration (aka excitement) is more fickle for me (than it is with say, programming) because things are usually more complex and I'm way less comfortable with my abilities (which is probably why I perceive it as more complex).
I frequently don't know where an idea will take me or what it is that I want to say until I write it down on the page. But "the idea" is often a very loose thing, it's more of a feeling actually. With programming I have code to work as a hook into excitement / inspiration. But how do you make hooks into a feeling?
Maybe you cannot. Maybe it's all just magic and one needs to take the opportunity when the flame burns. Still, I've found that by doing, and taking the opportunity as it arises, inspiration seems to be getting more and more frequent in my life.
Maybe it's also a matter of not getting in one's own way and trusting the process without a though for one's abilities or outcomes. After all, if I stop to think about it, that's exactly what I do when I jump into an old programming project I haven't worked with in a while.
I think a perhaps tentative conclusion is that hooks are there, and work exactly the same as when recalling a dream. The difference is that, with writing, they're all over the place and the trick is to learn to allow (and trust) oneself to see them.