What Should We Do When Inspiration Hits?
How the headlong rush into creating is often premature and misguided
Inspiration is “the process of being mentally stimulated to do or feel something.”
I think most of us are familiar with the process: You’re in your car listening to a new song from your favorite artist, staring out over the mountains at a breathtaking sunset, or watching a movie you’ve seen 10 times before, when suddenly you’re hit as if by a bus with the urge to act. To do, as the definition above states so blandly, “something.”
In this post, I want to talk about that something.
I’m often confused by what seems to be the default instinct in people, which is twofold:
Pinpoint the creative medium which inspires you most often (music, film, literature, paintings, etc.)
Become yourself a creator of that same medium.
And now that I think about it, the optional third step could then be:
Feel discouraged and wonder why your fervor peters out after a short period of time, or why your song, short film, or debut novel just isn’t nearly as good as the greats.
I have firsthand experience with this. The most notable example that comes to mind is from late 2020, when I found myself listening to movie soundtracks all the time. I’m not sure if it was the correlation with the events of the movies themselves, or something unknowable in the sweeping movements of the orchestras, but I found myself constantly filled with inspiration—mind wandering far away from the highway I was driving on, heart pounding in my chest, even occasionally tears welling in my eyes. Strongest of all, that unmistakable hallmark of inspiration: the urge to do something.
And just like that, I moved on to step 2. “Nothing moves me quite like these movie scores,” my train of thought went, “so I’ll become a composer.” It felt like a “duh” decision. Isn’t this just what you do?
Long story short, it went great—for about three weeks. I even bought a new Mac and installed Logic Pro, loading it up with a handful of juicy orchestral sampling packs.
But then the fire just… died.
Now, that ceaselessly advocating devil inside me feels the need to say that maybe, just maybe, I was lazy. Maybe I stopped prematurely. Maybe I should’ve kept at it, and I’d be happier now. But I don’t think that’s what was really going on.
I think that in reality, I chose the wrong “something” from my inspiration. I think the music that so moved me then was urging me to complete a different action altogether—one that has absolutely nothing to do with the medium (music) itself.
And when you think about it at the most basic level, this has to be the case to some degree. If every musician in the world made music only because they were inspired by someone else’s music, and that musician had only made their songs because they were inspired by someone else’s (and so on), then there wouldn’t really be any deeper core, or meaning, or reason that anchors the music to reality and makes it worth anything in itself. It would be like a long series of Russian nesting dolls, with nothing but air inside the innermost one.
Thinking about it now, it’s so simple. What did I really feel—what do I feel still—when I listen to a stunning movie score? When I’m laying in bed at night with my AirPods in, what visions dance through my head, and to what far away places does my mind journey?
Do I get visions of Hans Zimmer in his studio, mixing horns for The Lion King or Inception? When my eyes fill with tears, are they tears of envy, of longing to be recognized like he is, and to have works of my own released on streaming platforms to be appreciated by others? No, absolutely not.
When I first had this epiphany around 2022, I sat down and wrote out all the raw thoughts, all the “somethings” I felt compelled to do when I listened to music:
“I want to journey to the other side of the earth. I want to scale a mountain in a different country and scream my lungs out from the summit. I want to fall in love. I want to travel and experience new ways of life. I want to know what it’s like to make eye contact with a stranger as I walk down the street in a small town in France. I want to know what life would be like were I born a Nepalese villager. I want to land a job on the spot, in a place that I’m just passing through. I want to work aboard a ship heading for some other continent, with not a clue as to what I will do once I arrive. I want to live each day not knowing what the next will hold. Not once, not ever, have I really done that. Everything is so meticulously planned out and measured. I want to live a real adventure. To find myself in a new country one night, when I woke up that morning intending to stay in the same place. To celebrate joyously and yet wordlessly with those of another tongue. To live, to learn, to experience. To see if pine trees smell the same in Asia as they do in Speculator, New York. To smell the familiar scent of saltwater and campfire smoke, but on the beach of the European coast instead of on the Jersey Shore. To confront that longing; that deep, wordless cry that I find ever-present within me. To really confront it head on, to satisfy it, to fulfill it. To experience hard times, real hard times. To not have a hot shower ready at the very moment at which I desire it. To know the joy of being hopeless, but then finding hope once again. To be vulnerable. To put trust in others whom you have no reason to trust, and to see them pull through… or not. I want to vividly and truly experience beauty; of nature, people, architecture, or anything and everything else. That is what I feel when I hear moving music.”
1/23/22
I had learned, clearly and definitively, that those creative mediums which most frequently made my heart ache for something, were themselves unrelated to that something, and that my destiny, at least in that period of my life, would be best served somewhere else entirely.
And I made good on it too, writing this from Thailand a few months later:
“After songwriting on the beach, I hitched a ride in one of those pickup truck taxies to the ferry, and started over to Koh Phangan. For the last hour of the ride, I stood on the deck, looking at the surreal ocean, island, sunset scenery, and listening to the very soundtracks that had played such a huge part in inspiring me to go on an adventure in the first place. It was serene, somber, and incredibly powerful.”
10/14/22
Of course, this concept is not at all limited to music-borne inspiration. I’m convinced that the avid reader, the movie nut, the theater connoisseur, and everyone in between often makes the same mistake: trading the calling itself for the vessel that carries it.
Time for some disclaimers. Now that you know what I’m saying in the above section, I want to make very certain you also know what I’m not saying.
I’m not saying that the urge to be creative is unnatural, and anyone that feels it is mistaken.
It’s undeniable that we humans have an instinctual urge to create. It’s the most natural thing in the world. It comes out of us like water. There’s an unbroken line throughout history of people just constantly making better and better stuff as time goes on. I might even go so far as to say that creating should be the ultimate goal, the final, highest calling, of everyone on earth.
I’m also not saying everyone should shirk the mantle of productivity and spend the best years of their lives chasing down every random whim of the heart the moment it arrives.
But I do feel that one of the most common causes of this mistaken inspiration is the obsessive American desire for productivity—the gauging of a man’s worth only by the castle he’s built and not the seeds he’s planted.
The key is to realize that the creative process itself is at its best when it has as its backing a whole host of years spent learning, adventuring, and experiencing life itself, with all its terrific highs and horrific lows—for this is what will give your creations real value.
Fyodor Dostoevsky, perhaps the greatest novelist ever to exist, was once sentenced to death by firing squad for anti-government activities. He literally watched the group before him get gunned down, then donned a white cloak, kissed a cross, and just as the rifles aimed at his own back and prepared to fire, the execution was called off.
Afterwards, he wrote the following:
"When I look back on my past and think how much time I wasted on nothing, how much time has been lost in futilities, errors, laziness, incapacity to live; how little I appreciated it, how many times I sinned against my heart and soul – then my heart bleeds. Life is a gift, life is happiness, every minute can be an eternity of happiness!”
It’s no coincidence that Dostoevsky’s greatest works, The Brothers Karamazov, Crime and Punishment, and Notes from Underground, were all written after he’d had this harrowing experience—and undoubtedly countless other experiences of the same vivid intensity, whether wonderful, horrible, or everything in between—for by this point, he had lived—really lived—and having really lived, could create works of stunning brilliance. This is what I desire for myself—and for you, dear reader.
So, what should we do when inspiration hits? I propose a new two-step process:
Allow yourself to feel without the mad rush to be productive. Ascertain where that ache in your chest really comes from, and what you must do to quell it.
No matter how idealistic, romantic, or childish it may seem, go do it.