What is inspiration? The word
comes from the Latin ‘to breathe in.’ I’m taking that to mean breathing in
one’s surroundings to get something from it. The question remains: What are we
taking, where are we taking it from, why can we take it from there and why does
it make us do things?
I’d like to start by saying I
have no idea. I’ve read around and had some thoughts on the subject but I’m not
writing to educate people on what inspires me: that does not matter.
Inspiration causes people to
do amazing things. It could be argued that it is the thing that has driven all
of human history from the fire and the wheel to the symphony and the Space
Station. It gives people ideas and passion that fester and grow inside people
until it becomes impossible for it to not manifest itself somehow into the
world. Inspiration is found in the glimmer on the needle’s end, on the
broad-back of a sparrow’s wing, on the reflection in the mirror-like pond and
in the face of a loved one. It literally can be found anywhere, so does that
mean that we made it up, beauty in the eye of the beholder and all that? Not
necessarily. This idea comes from the notion started by Descartes and Kant:
That the world is subjective. Art and beauty specifically is subjective. It
should be noted that they are among the first to think this idea that has
become so common-place today. My opinion that Beethoven’s 5th is
better than Justin Bieber’s new single is both pompous and silly as all art
always is equal regardless of content. Needless to say, I disagree with this
very much.
Plato described the idea of a
world of Forms where everything in this world is just an imperfect copy of the
epitome of that thing in another world that makes us know what it should look
like. For example a chair is a chair because we know it looks like the Perfect
Chair of which we have a sort of ancestral memory of. Something is beautiful
because is somewhat resembles the Form of beauty. Now what of inspiration? Does
it take it shape from a Perfect Inspiration or is it merely the expression of
the feeling of great beauty?
The 18th century
poet, William Blake, had his own philosophy on the matter: He described what he
called the Poetic Inspiration. Blake reasoned that if mankind was biological,
he was destined to repeat himself endlessly generation to generation, and is
somewhat seen throughout history. The important thing to note is that it
doesn’t. New art, music and literature is created, new ideas are had. But why?
He reasoned that as a biological creature, there must be some kind of
Poetic/Divine Inspiration that caused new ideas to be had in people. I think
there might be something in it.
The alternative perspective is
that inspiration is made-up to describe the biological processes in the brain
that happen when we see something we find interesting. This changes person to
person because of the make-up of the brain. I think there’s something that
causes that to happen. I see no reason why this can’t be the mechanism for this
to happen, but I’d like to think there is more than just chemicals driving the
magic of history.
From a Jewish perspective, we
believe that all things come from Hashem. All insight, wisdom and beauty comes
from Him. To me, this seems very similar if not the same to what Blake
described as the Divine Inspiration. At
the end of the day, does it really matter? It works, so let it.
