It was Terry Pratchett, in his description of the not-so-tortured genius of Leonard of Quirm ( a fictional character parodying the real-life renaissance genius Leonardo De Vinci), who defined inspiration in one of the most efficiently evocative ways possible. He stated that inspiration is essentially individual ideas, represented by particles, which moved through the universe completely unseen by the naked eye or any kind of scientific instrumentality.

These ‘inspiration particles’ then randomly intercept with peoples brains and trigger their minds, causing them to create and invent. In Leonard of Quirm (and presumably his real-life equivilant) this happens on a regular basis, whilst others less fortunate might spend a lifetime with a single idea springing to mind. Other ideas never intercept a mind, whilst still more will grant visions of cold fusion or the precise manner in which the higgs boson can be acquired

It’s imaginative, as with everything else that Pratchett does, and brilliant. Whilst complete nonsense, of course, it does give a kind of pagan reasoning to the arbitrary process of creative genius. Why does one person come up with a hundred ideas in their particular field (and others) before they’ve even brushed their teeth in the morning, whilst the guy next door couldn’t come up with an original thought if he was locked in a room and given a small army of keyboard proficient monkeys to work with? It’s the arbitrary process of the particles, of course. With that in mind, of course, anyone with a basic knowledge of mathematical probability will tell you that true random patterns tend to form clusters. An artificial one with have an even distribution, whilst dumb luck will cause a roulette table to spit out twelve blacks in a row, over half of which are even.

So what? Inspiration is well represented by a pseudo-scientific theory that bears no real relevance to reality nor gives anyone a useful outlook or pro-active action to take (other then inventing some kind of ‘inspiration particle magnet helmet’ or to begin running around bobbing their head madly to catch errant particles, screaming ‘eureka!’ every few minutes)? Well, it’s something that stuck with me. Whilst I’m no Leonard of Quirm – in fact I could more be considered the equivilent of the simple-minded native islander who looked up from his hunt one day and realized he’d figured out the perfect method for giving enough propulsion to produce lift without creating too much mass – I do find myself with an over-abundance of ideas. And it’s further compounded by the fact that these things come at random times.

Just this evening, prior to writing this, I was sitting down reading a Ben Elton novel and drinking quietly when the ticking components of my subconcious mind suddenly clicked together in an alarming pattern. Like the spring and cog mechanism of a cuckoo clock it all clunked into place and spat out an alarmingly obnoxious figurehead whilst the event was marked down and the cog all resumed their infinitely complex movements. Whilst nascent in form this new idea is completely out of tilt with everything else I’ve thought of so far and will continue to grind it’s way through the mental processes of my mind; at that point pen will meet paper and it’ll all be downhill to a half-finished story from their.

The cool thing is that can actually trace this particular idea back through the hazy recollections of my subconcious mind. A particular mental image from an expositional, scene setting sentence in the book I was reading connected with a picture I saw on the internet (a gun, to be specific; a flintlock pistol with an axe-head at the end of the barrel and the grip overly long to create a handle for the axe function of the weapon. Very cool.). Like a puzzle being solved or a formulae being worked out, my background thoughts took these two chunks of ‘that’s cool’ and began working them against eachother, filling in the blanks around them until…it clicked. The cuckoo sprang forth, X = Y and I found the corner piece.

People often ask me where I get my ideas, or how do I find inspiration. Short answer; I have no idea. Shit just springs to mind. The realistic simple answer is that my brain works differently from other peoples. The paganistic pseudo-science answer is that my brain is an Idea Particle magnet.

Either way, it’s cool.

Ian.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 14th, 2009 at 4:45 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.