Inspiration and Joy
Genius is ten percent inspiration and ninety percent perspiration. I think, at least. I’m too lazy right now to Google the quote.
Much as my lazy self would love to argue it, I believe that’s true. Genius starts with an idea and is brought to fruition through squalid living conditions, late nights of doing worthwhile things besides clicking on the Stumble! button, possessing enough consistency to look up a quote and not just the word squalid, and a day job you can tolerate in light of a genius end goal.
When you hit that glorious end goal, even tougher is to glow in its completion, retaining enough exultation upon completion to instill your witnesses with a sense of how much you enjoyed yourself working on the amazing achievement.
One of the main reasons I think Owl City is my favorite band (and believe me, it’s taken me forever to have a favorite band with my drifting from music genre to music genre) is because you listen to Adam Young sing his silly little songs with his electronic beeps, dlurs, and vorks, and all of a sudden you realize he’s having oodles of fun singing. Even when he’s melancholy.
Maybe it’s something in his voice. Maybe it’s the jaunty lilts of his synth. Maybe I need to get my ears cleaned. Whatever. Adam Young is not the only one I’ve noticed doing this.
David Tennant said playing the main character Doctor Who was a dream he hoped to achieve when he acting. When he’s playing the doctor, pure glee enters his eye at every happy moment in an episode. A fierce focus transforms his face when he’s serious. Anger is not just anger for him; Tennant as the doctor exudes a sheer contradiction in raw, yet contained, fury.
Plus, I think he’s a bit touched. Anyone who’s seen his mental performance as Barty Crouch Jr. in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire would start to wonder if some of those cackles and tics were old habits dying hard.
Sometimes, realizing how much the artist enjoys his work takes longer for me. Writers tend to be mysteries (and no, I’m not giving myself too much credit or a cool persona). I personally find it hard to identify a writer’s voice. Maybe their enjoyment is not revealed there. Maybe the discovery of their enjoyment is spread out among their lives in addition to their work.
Neil Gaiman, who muscled up beside Terry Pratchett for the long battle with trench coats and broad swords on my favorite author pedestal, is subtle in expressing such enjoyment. It took me awhile to learn his enjoyment is expressed through taking advantage of rewriting reality: the plain, worn woman in the corner of the diner eating the heart of a fairy tale trickster (Harlequin Valentine), the under-towns and secret societies of forgotten people in Neverwhere, the mirror world of women with buttons for eyes and talking cats (Coraline).
A writer does not stop at writing. A writer experiences. Gaiman experiences well. He was called a pencil-necked weasel by a rabid republican and the subsequent rush of his fans to the revealing news website overloaded the server. He wields his celebrity in aid of causes that encourage kids to write comics and keep comics protected under the first amendment. He married a punk/goth/dark cabaret/what words do I use to describe her/giving up now rock chick who can sing softly with a ukulele and features wicked sexy eyebrows that might lean me toward the side of sporting facial tattoos if only I could play an instrument for Flatfoot 56.
“Mrs. Whitaker found the Holy Grail; it was under a fur coat.” (“Chivalry”) When you’re a writer, you must turn the world upside down in a way that makes the audience cock their head and murmur a reverent ooh like my sister did when she found out David Tennant would be considered for a role in The Hobbit. Gaiman turns the world upside down and ends his story with a flourish. The flourish is such that the story is no longer resting in his hands but the hands of your own imagination, the tale continuing in your own mind.
It is a state achieved only when you possess enough love for your craft. Inspiration produces joy through this.
One final example just coz I can:
I’m jealous of how in love with their music they are and don’t care if they look like idiots bobbing their heads in time.
