Inspiration deprivation

Man, I am a blogging fool. Enjoy this while it lasts, kids, because I doubt I'll be able to keep up this level of output for long.

So in my improv class tonight, we were talking about inspiration and where it comes from. In improv, you're supposed to get inspiration from your scene partners, so that things they say inspire you to say things that inspire them and on and on in a awesome spiral of creation. It got me thinking about inspiration and the things that inspire us.

People are inspired by different things. My brother Josh is often inspired by stupid things like rock climbing and nature. These things cause him to write a few lines of a song. He then pawns this skeleton of a song off on me and leaves me to flesh it out into all its glorious majesty. (Okay, that only happened once. But it was the only song we've written together, so I can claim it sets a precedent.)

I'm often inspired by things I don't understand. Whenever I feel myself getting over-confident or cocky, I think of all the things I couldn't explain to cavemen. Seriously, think about what would happen if you were transported back to cavemen days or even the days of Romans. You could tell them ABOUT a lot of cool things, but how much could you really explain so that they could develop it? Not a whole lot, I'm guessing. Take music recording, for instance. I don't even want to think about CDs, that involves lasers and crap. Even cassetes use high-tech stuff like magnetic tape. But forget all that, I don't even understand records! Here's a round plate of vinyl that has grooves on it. You scratch a needle across it and music comes out? How the crap does that work?

I forget how that inspires me, but it does. Maybe it just reminds me not to be jaded and to let myself be filled with wonder every now and again. Because there are lots and lots of wonderful things out there. Like a dude rapping out his apartment window. So my advice: let yourself be inspired by something today.

Maybe something like rock climbing.