On Inspiration
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Usually the best ideas arrive while shaving. The rhythmic pull and drag of a warm razor across soap and foam often compel unique metaphors into being. I suspect it is the fact the analytical braincells are so concentrated on repetitive motions, on protecting the neck or scalp from nicks and sudden accidents the creative braincells feel less restrictive, less on call to perform on demand; they roam and waltz freely, making sudden suggestions on whim.
In my case, shaving is a regular necessity. There once existed a time I could wait once a week to trim back the wiry hair along my chin and jawline—but since I’ve reached the age when one’s hair recedes in strange patterns across the dome of the head, every other day requires the ritual production form social presentations. For vanity.
As it
is, planning for an epiphany never bodes well. Every trip to the bathroom sink does not provide the end result of a King Lear manuscript, as much as I would
like to think. Imagination is tricky. It serves its own purposes. Ray Bradbury’s
analogy describing creative insight as a cat works best. Writers cannot
approach their ideas head on—individuals must patiently wait for the idea-cat to approach, under its own
rules and desires. Quietly. In secret. Once the design is within arm’s reach, then
quickly grab it. Work through the details carefully, lovingly. From this point,
build the moment to fruition and a strong product can be gained.
•••
“The poetic quality is not marshalled in rhyme or uniformity or abstract addresses to things nor in melancholy complaints or good precepts, but is the life of these and much else and is in the soul. The profit of rhyme is that it drops seeds of a sweeter and more luxuriant rhyme, and of uniformity that it conveys itself into its own roots in the ground out of sight. The rhyme and uniformity of perfect poems show the free growth of metrical laws and bud from them as unerringly and loosely as lilacs or roses on a bush, and take shapes as compact as the shapes of chestnuts and oranges and melons and pears, and shed the perfume impalpable to form. The fluency and ornaments of the finest poems or music or orations or recitations are not independent but dependent. All beauty comes from beautiful blood and a beautiful brain. If the greatnesses are in conjunction in a man or woman it is enough. . . . the fact will prevail through the universe . . . but the gaggery and gilt of a million years will not prevail.”
— Walt Whitman, Preface to Leaves of Grass, 1855
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following close, the river, fractured—https://fragmentedportrait.blogspot.com/