July

"Oh, let the sun beat down upon my face, stars to fill my dream
I am a traveler of both time and space, to be where I have been
To sit with elders of the gentle race, this world has seldom seen
They talk of days for which they sit and wait and all will be revealed

Talk and song from tongues of lilting grace, whose sounds caress my ear
But not a word I heard could I relate, the story was quite clear..."

-Robert Plant

On Innovation

Not too long ago I was asked to be "more innovative". For once, and you can draw a cross on the kitchen wall to mark this most sacred day, I was too stunned to speak. Innovation, as a term, stems from the Latin word "innovatus", which is the noun form of innovare "to renew and to change". In order to change, or to renew, one needs inspiration, and inspriration is not something in me that cannot be switched on/off by command. There is of course the kind of innovation set in motion by external forces, be it happiness, sorrow, loss, a change in the market place, destruction, annihilation or another threat. However, to me, inspiration in its purest form is something not to be analyzed or understood.

It just arrives.

There are not too many things in this existence I feel so nonchalant about. It is one of the few things that need not to be understood. I think of it, in my understanding, pretty much the same way Robert Fripp feels about (creating) music: music is always present, music is always there, but we have to be able to hear it. We have to be able to receive it. In order to hear this inspiration one must learn how to listen to silence. One has to be silent. When, and if, it arrives, it is another thing completely.  

Anyone who has ever done anything that resembles creative work, knows what I'm talkin' about. The self-feeding cycle of accomplishment and triumph, the overwhelming sensation of creating something that is completely new and something that has not existed before, and breathing life into something subjectively unique. And I dare say "fuck it", if someone has had the same idea before, because the sensation cannot, and will not, be diminished by the discovery of similar structures in this time and space. We all, creatively speaking, draw water from the same well, drink the cosmos therein, and piss the same possibilities. 

If you do not have a single creative cell in the decaying piece of flesh you call "body", then pass on by, stranger, pass on by, for you will not get, understand, and comprehend it in a million cycles of the sun, the stars, or the motherfucking moon.

And, alas, we come a full circle here. Asking someone to be "more creative", getting a "no" for an answer, and then going ballistic about it would be like asking "what time it is", and then getting pissed off about the answer.