Inspiration Decoded

Tonight I overheard someone say “You’re so busying thinking outside the box, that you never stopped to look inside it.” I have no idea why that struck me in such a funny way because it doesn’t make a lot of sense. But I kept it, tucked it away in the back of my mind with all the other bits of treasure and shiny things that you find in a given day. Seeds.

I read an article last fall about a study on gesture. It’s long and complicated but the end result was that through gesture a group of students indicated that they understood the basic concept of a math problem in a subconscious way before they learned it in a conscious way. What does this mean? It means part of our brain is thinking all on its own. Part of our brain that we don’t have access to.

Then I thought about the relatively short time between when a student in the study was  first introduced to the concept and demonstrated a subconscious understanding and when they comprehending it in a logical way. It was a pretty simple transition and so the time might be a few hours or a couple of days.

But that leads me to wonder, what would happen if the brain were handed a really complex thought. One that would take a long and comprehensive study before it would be able to delivery to us a conscious understanding of the answer. How long could that hidden brain chew on a problem? Weeks? Years? Decades? Does the moment of inspiration you had in the shower this morning represent the delivery of an answer to a problem that you first encountered as a child?

Have you ever had a dream where you were talking to someone smarter than you? Or someone who spoke a different language? How could the you that you are produce these entities unless there was more info in there than you currently have access to?

Here’s where I’m going with this.

Artistically, intellectually, we all have a lot of filters. We worry and want things to be perfect, so we strangle our own ideas before they have a chance to be fully explored. Giving yourself permission to create freely with no censoring is really really hard. Don’t believe me? Take out a sheet of paper and write down whatever comes to mind, don’t think any further than that. Write as fast as you can all the way through one page. The filters slowly dam the flow of creativity and you’re stifled.

When I was writing IRL and at the same time trying to work on a paper that would examine it theoretically I literally came to a complete standstill. I lost nearly a month of my writing time until one day my friend and colleague told me to stop working on the paper and to let other people worry about the theory of it. I was trying to analyze the play before I had even written it. Too many filters.

It’s scary to run with you filters off. You get a lot of garbage. You get a lot of weird stuff. You’ve got to mine a lot of rock to get a handful of diamonds. But the more often you have at it the easier it is to get access to the stores of information and activity that you’ve got going on in your head all the time, in the background. Learning how and making time to stop and listen to yourself and all the things that you have inside is the artist’s secret. Inspiration decoded.

Tags: art, artist, criticism, inspiration, theatre