Electric Avenue

Since my last attempt at trying to break the shackles of inactivity, nothing cosmic, or for that matter local, has happened. It's incredible how spurts of pseudo-inspiration can transcend one an occasional optimist. The inflation of nothingness, the glossy veneer of self-satisfaction (not like THAT) and the instantaneous adrenaline rush. If it's spurty, it's not worth it.

Like all things worth anything, the coercion of this ephemeral quality to remain buoyant is imperative; Sizzle. Simmer. Sustain.  While the blatancy of a prophetic statement pronounced set to a sweeping score ( Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things and no good thing ever dies.” — The Shawshank Redemption) is inspirational in the sheer spurty-pseudo-inspiration in inspires, it pales to the brevity of the subtle wink and a knowing nod (Liam Neeson in the last reel of Schindler's list). And my cerebrum, hoodwinked by the former sets about trying to achieve the latter. This apparent cranial processing fallacy (because I am a neuroscientist, part time) is my excuse at lacking longevity (again, not like THAT) in thought. To sustain. To conceive, nurture, cradle, support and augment a spurt into something indelible, in thought and action is incredibly sexy. This intimacy of comfort isn't clearly a passive, or easy, process. And hence the "half written sentences within a grandiose yet incomplete blueprint for a screenplay, an overflowing kitchen sink left to stew in its own wake, patchy relationships that descend into apathy, indifference and worst of all, the onset of a prosaic, symbiotic state" I mentioned last time.

Here's my spin on cajoling inspiration that shall require a cosmic leap of faith: 

"The more I examine the universe, and the details of its architecture, the more evidence I find that the Universe in some sense must have known we were coming." Freeman Dyson

Dyson talks of a Universe that fine-tunes itself, much like a sentient being, into accommodating life as we know it. In other words, it exerts control, precisely and subtly, over its own demeanour. Now, am not suggesting the Universe has a cerebral cortex (because I am a cosmologist the rest of the time), or a predisposed "will", but merely drawing a parallel between my embellished theory of the mind to another seemingly unproven metaphysical activity, to further my own selfish interest. (That, by the way, is confirmation bias; probably the only scientifically factual thing you will find amongst these scribblings). Could it be that the Universe is organically nurturing, cradling and supporting its spurt of inspiration by letting it simmer and sizzle? If it is, perhaps an active concentration of efforts towards keeping spurts of inspiration alive, cogent and relevant is the order of the day. Perhaps that's why marriage, a seemingly unnatural process with no immediate benefits, still exists. Perhaps that's why a red-nosed, sailor-mouthed Scotsman became the greatest football manager of all time. Perhaps this controlled dissemination of inspiration, with neither juvenile impulses nor momentary lapses, is the most potent of all weapons. Perhaps this is where inspiration becomes drive. And a reason to live. And survive. And inspire. 

 So yes, being shaken out of a self-induced stupor is a start. A spurt, even. But taking any notion, any idea from concept to completion is the real deal. Brilliant.

 

“….Now all I have to do

Is let it sizzle, simmer and stew….”

(Best hummed to the tune of Eddy Grant’s Electric Avenue)

 

Till the next time.

The paradoxical nature of why it takes a Herculean effort to begin the very thing you feel you are born to do.

You will always find requisite time and mojo in a day to do things that enthral you. If you don’t, then those things don’t enthral you enough. Think, eating oats for breakfast or going for a run or waking up earlier than your alarm. Then think about the extra half hour of telly before bed, that surplus glass of wine and the extended walk you endured simply to accompany the pretty stranger you met on the bus between stops.

 Depending on your persona, your mental state, the strength of your will and the loquaciousness you possess, either of those scenarios enthral you. If however, you exist in a fragile and holistically vacuous tedium, then neither will. This tedium, highly comforting in its passivity and far-reaching in its plangent occupation of the once vivid mind space, is highly personal. Mine tends to take the form of half written sentences within a grandiose yet incomplete blueprint for a screenplay, an overflowing kitchen sink left to stew in its own wake, patchy relationships that descend into apathy, indifference and worst of all, the onset of a prosaic, symbiotic state. What brings this tedium on? Two-parts indifference, two-parts slovenliness, a hint of superciliousness and a sprinkle of pessimism, served in seething cynicism ought to do it. Darkness, like unbridled optimism or emasculating love, is overrated. And yet, for the emotionally gullible (who would ever have thought I would be this) it exudes an alluring glow. The dark side beckons.

So, how does one clear up the cob-webs and start over? How does one de-evolutionalize? Or shed the years of scepticism in return for the ability to find seemingly inane things enthralling again? Celebrating mediocrity perhaps isn't quite the curse I made it out to be. But, at the risk of sounding nauseatingly augural, there is bound to be light at the end of this particular tunnel. Or a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Or a/an insert-a-popular-and-attractive-object-here at the end of a/an insert-a-man made-or-natural-manifestation-of-architecture here. For me, my mattress at the end of the cliff is to assimilate enough scatterbrained frivolities from the walks of life and somehow orchestrate all of them into a cogent document. Or writing, as normal people call it.  

Which brings me neatly back to my central theme:  The paradoxical nature of why it takes a Herculean effort to begin the very thing you feel you are born to do. And my answer is that it doesn't. It doesn't require effort as it’s an entirely organic process that cannot be stymied by the state of one’s mind. Yes, occasional feelings of angst, loneliness and solitude help colour and mould the organic process, but not change its intrinsic qualities. And that, either because it’s true or through its placebo, is enough to reinvigorate my hitherto derelict mind out of a self induced stupor and on to some semblance of action.

Oh wait, I've said this before.