Inspiration

What is inspiration?  That's a deceptively simple question that often has very complex answers.  To me, inspiration is when I feel the urge to create or to do something because of what someone else said or did, or perhaps something that happened which I experience causing me to feel the need to express something - that last point perhaps can be used to boil the whole thing down into one simple point: inspiration is the motivation of expression.  Philosophically, and from a Scientific point of view, Causality is the idea that for every cause there is an effect, and concurrently for every effect there is a cause.  I find that concept fascinating because of the potential to create a chain from any given point in all of space and time that you can choose as your starting point, and travel backward along a path of events back to the moment of creation of this Universe the first moment, divine inspiration it you are so inclined.

The interesting point for me that I can take away from this thought process is the realisation that everything in existence is interdependent and that ultimately everything inspires everything in one great paradox.  I find humour in those moments when you see two people argue over the originality of an idea, where one cites a work as being breathtaking and innovative, and the other retorts that the original idea came from some other work.  The idea of finality in that statement makes no sense to me after the realisation above, because that work they cite is the product of many others that came before it.  If you follow that path you would have endless arguments citing each preceding work. 

While this path is easy to trace when it comes to concrete ideas that have rigidity to them, it becomes harder to trace back fluid ideas, abstract concepts, and notions that are derived from moments of epiphany, where the creator came to some great and sudden realisation of knowledge.  Epiphany is a black box to the effort to trace a clear path from present form back through to the conception of an idea.  Sometimes it can be a gap where we can see the path before and after but not what happens inside the box.  Sometimes it is a dead end, with no clear indication of origins to the path other than the plenitude of ideas and previous works that fed into the black box up until that point.

Music is perhaps one of the most "mystical" examples of this black box, with the inspiration for musical works being hard to trace.  It can be easier for those who have a greater understanding, who know enough about composition to break down a piece of music into its individual components and critically analyse the nature of the work, they perhaps have the greatest opportunity to discern the origin of the path.  Therein lies another realisation that tracing ideas backward to their origin often requires as much, if not more, knowledge and understanding than it does to take existing ideas and form new ones.  It's easier to invent a word than to trace the etymology of the ones we already use.