Inspiration

Jack London said he had to go after inspiration “with a club”.

I’m thinking I can analyze “inspiration” and systematize it. Don’t believe it!

I don’t mind telling you I have had dreams that scared me. I don’t mind saying I woke up and looked at the clock and I thought I’d had only 4 or 5 hours of sleep, but I’d been dreaming of “good killing” or worse and I couldn’t stand the idea of more and decide I wasn’t bloody well going back to sleep.

Later, after telling myself repeatedly, “It was nothing but a damn dream, Joe,” I feel distinctly that I am two-minded: there’re the Me present when I’m asleep, and the awake Me, an ego-protecting mind that rationally censors my thoughts. Even George E. Foreman instructs one to “control your thoughts”.

The mechanical difference between my sleep-mind and my awake-mind is that my sleep-mind plays random, unfiltered scenarios, while, when I am awake - because my ego needs protection - my awake-mind does two things:

1.     Works on problems.

2.     Irrationally rationalizes everything else to match my personal life paradigms.

My awake-mind is a plodding sieve that only interferes with the fluidity of “inspiration”. My asleep-mind – usually termed the sub-conscious – is all that is left to be pointed at as my source of “inspiration”.

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 Above, for quite a while, I was sure I was doing really pretty good analytic thinking. I was typing along and congratulating myself – that I was welding-up the ground work for a slick demo that “inspiration” comes only and obviously from one’s sub-conscious mind. I actually started this Post out believing that. There’s just one problem.

Where did LOSTINE come from?

In many contexts, I’ve stated that the novel Lostine originated outside myself. Writing Lostine, I was an inexperienced fictionist. The sublimity of Lostine – well, Willa Cather tells us that My Antonia was her favorite story. Reading other of her novels, I see what she meant. What her admission means to me is that Willa Cather didn’t know how she achieved My Antonia. She found out she couldn’t repeat the wonderful spell of My Antonia.

Willa Cather had to just accept the magic of My Antonia; for the same reasons, I will protect Lostine.

Oh. I don’t use a club. I’m done with hammers, pneumatic drivers, grinders, roto-chippers, dry-wall blades, ladders, scaffolds, crawl spaces, attics, wasps, hornets and knee pads.

For inspiration, I just coffee-up and sit and wait. I sit and wait. I sit and wait. I sit and wait. I don’t push buttons on any device. I don’t walk or talk or trim my nails. I don’t even bite them. I just sit and wait.