Welcome
Inspiration is a tricky thing. Sometimes it feels like a lightning bolt, other times like a slow ember in the dark. In this episode, we sit with both. We ask what fuels the creative spirit and how artists throughout time have danced with the spark.
We talk about the pull between silence and noise, how stillness can hold possibility, and how chaos can give birth to unexpected beauty. We wander through Walden, Wu-Tang, Hunter S. Thompson, and everything in between. This is a conversation about the pulse beneath the paint, the note between the beats, the space before the idea.
In Episode 4: Inspiration in Art, we explore how creativity reveals itself in strange places, how artists shape and are shaped by what inspires them, and why inspiration is less of a muse and more of a current waiting to be felt.
It is thoughtful and playful, quiet and loud, a soft nudge to follow the spark wherever it leads.
Mentions and References
🎨 Henry Miller
📖 Henry David Thoreau — Walden
🎨 Jean-Michel Basquiat
🎨 Andy Warhol
🎧 Wu-Tang Clan
🎧 Rush — “Free Will”
📝 Neil Gaiman — Make Good Art
🎧 Professor Elemental
🎧 Dr Syntax
🧪 Albert Hofmann
✍️ Hunter S. Thompson
🔥 Burning Man
“Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.” — Pablo Picasso
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Episode 4 Inspiration in Art
[00:00:00] The Musician: Hey Everybody.
[00:00:08] The Writer: I’m the Writer.
[00:00:09] The Musician: I’m a Musician. Today on our show, we sat and talked about the topic, like what should we talk about? And in that question there lies the question itself. Do you need inspiration to create art?
[00:00:32] The Writer: Oh, it’s such a delicious question. ’cause I know there’s so many answers.
[00:00:38] The Musician: It’s not just yes or no?
[00:00:40] The Writer: No. The answer to that one is a no.
[00:00:48] The Musician: I think it’s, no, I think you are inspired. By life itself in some gratitude. Every day that you wake up living this [00:01:00] life, that in itself is the inspiration to make something happen artistically. And whether it’s a good or bad day, your bad days, create good art. Your good days create good art. Like the most beautiful thing that ever happened to you, the most awful thing that ever happened to you all can be put into your art.
[00:01:21] The Writer: Yeah, I find that even a lot of ideas will come at really random moments like when I’m washing dishes or I’m in the shower and I’m just living my life and the inspiration just happens. And then I also find myself feeling like I have a creature inside of me that I need to feed inspiration to, and it’s always hungry and ravenous and I need to feed it.
[00:01:53] The Writer: And I actually feel a sense of starving when I don’t go and search for inspiration from somewhere.
[00:01:59] The Musician: But [00:02:00] you say search for inspiration somewhere as if it doesn’t inherently already exist within you.
[00:02:05] The Writer: Oh, it’s there. It’s there, but then it’s, let’s see,
[00:02:10] The Musician: so do you need inspiration to create better art?
[00:02:15] The Writer: Ooh.
[00:02:15] The Musician: Is your best art made from really good inspiration or really, um, moving inspiration or, you know, the
[00:02:22] The Writer: right, the,
[00:02:23] The Musician: does the bigger inspiration create the bigger art or again,
[00:02:29] The Writer: or does that,
[00:02:29] The Musician: is it just inside you
[00:02:31] The Writer: put layers over. Perhaps inspiration that’s already there. Like does it build on top of what’s already there, which means we don’t need anything at all. So like say, okay, for example, say we were to go out into, um, the, what’s that, the Pacific Crest Trail and be in nature for days and days and days and days, [00:03:00] and you’re just.
[00:03:02] The Writer: But then you get inspiration from nature. So,
[00:03:05] The Musician: well, not just inspiration from nature,
[00:03:08] The Writer: from your own self,
[00:03:09] The Musician: but blocking the inspiration from society. Like to disconnect, to go out in nature. They say, you know, oh, I have no wifi connection, but that’s like, who cares? Your connection is, you know, to nature and to something bigger than you know.
[00:03:31] The Musician: Our little, like our society has a, has a box that you get into that has money and houses and, and society and whatever. And the moment you separate from all of that and go out into the, into the forest and are just a human being out in nature.
[00:03:51] The Writer: Then you’re able to more easily like listen to your own inner inspiration that’s already there.
[00:03:58] The Musician: I agree.
[00:03:59] The Writer: Is that what you mean?
[00:03:59] The Musician: But that’s [00:04:00] still theoretically. No, I mean, I agree, but that’s theoretically yes. That’s the theory.
[00:04:04] The Writer: Yeah.
[00:04:04] The Musician: But it’s tested and almost tried and true. Like Walden going out to. Nature.
[00:04:09] The Writer: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:04:11] The Musician: Supreme inspiration. But then you find the same inspiration with someone like Basquiat or Andy Warhol in society, taking culture and throwing it back in, in cultures, in society’s space like
[00:04:23] The Writer: Yeah.
[00:04:25] The Musician: And which is the more valid inspiration, neither. In if you’re trying to judge.
[00:04:32] The Writer: It’s true. It’s like the, you know, polar opposite states that exist all through our lives and like in ourselves with so many different qualities. And then how that pendulum does swing from just inspiration from the world. And then inspiration from deep inside yourself.
[00:04:52] The Writer: Like if you’re meditating and you gain it or that way, you know, and that quiet,
[00:04:56] The Musician: sure.
[00:04:57] The Writer: The inspiration that comes from [00:05:00] quiet or the inspiration that comes from chaos and
[00:05:04] The Musician: noise.
[00:05:04] The Writer: Noise and movement, stimulation.
[00:05:08] The Musician: But then Henry Miller said, “chaos is the score upon which reality is written.” So we’ve written our society, created the society on total chaos.
[00:05:21] The Musician: We create the buildings and the roads and the, and the whole order of society on top of a chaotic nature, where if we didn’t have all this to protect us, we’d be, you know, mauled by bears and
[00:05:35] The Writer: Oh yeah. Yeah. And the, you
[00:05:36] The Musician: know, everything would come and get us the wild poisonous bugs and snakes and things.
[00:05:39] The Musician: We’d just be at the mercy of nature. But we’ve protected ourselves away from all that. Who knows?
[00:05:48] The Writer: It is such a massive question. To me. It feels like I wanna dissect it like it’s so big, and I just wanna,
[00:05:55] The Musician: well, you mentioned the. Duality and
[00:05:59] The Writer: [00:06:00] yeah,
[00:06:00] The Musician: so like in the most basic duality, just light and dark, I think of yin and yang.
[00:06:05] The Musician: And when you say the pendulum, the the symbol for yin and yang has a little spot of light inside the dark and a little spot of dark inside the light. And both of the objects imply a motion of a circle that, that, that eats itself. The light eats the darkness, and the darkness eats the light. And neither is, neither is, Ooh.
[00:06:26] The Writer: That’s the creature I’m talking about inside myself.
[00:06:30] The Musician: Neither is bigger, you know? Yeah. They’re both the same size. They both have the same qualities. They both have a little bit of each in. Yeah. Inside of, yeah. It’s a perfect device. It’s a perfect, uh, just like chess too. Wu Tang was inspired by chess, and
[00:06:48] The Writer: I love that
[00:06:48] The Musician: they play chess and, and there’s a, they’ll talk about it in interviews about, uh, chess and it’s such a perfect metaphor. The game itself is a, [00:07:00] is a metaphor or, or something that mirrors the quality of life by having a light and a dark equal. There’s. The number of spaces on the board, 64 spaces on the, on the board, even evenly balanced squares of light and dark, where if you cut it in half, then your half has the same amount of light and dark that mine has.
[00:07:22] The Musician: You’re the light pieces. I’m the dark pieces. Well, we have the same number of pieces on the same number of squares, and as you move around the board, you could, you would never see the same. Patterns, like unique patterns exist in chess all the time because every player’s different. Every, every game is different and it, and it sort of mirrors life in that way where given the same situation, somebody with their experiences would attack it differently.
[00:07:58] The Musician: And so then that [00:08:00] comes back to something I think we talked about in a previous podcast that. If somebody had the same experiences you had, would they react the same? And usually the answer is yes. Like when you have to have empathy or compassion for somebody else, you have to realize that given their circumstances, you would probably make the same decisions given their entire life leading up to that moment.
[00:08:20] The Musician: You would probably make the same decision they made and then you wanna understand them more than judge them or cast them aside and say, I would never do that. The things you hate the most in people are things that you hate the most in yourself.
[00:08:35] The Writer: Hmm.
[00:08:36] The Musician: If you even want to use the hate word, maybe are, um, repelled or not attracted to.
[00:08:46] The Writer: Hmm.
[00:08:49] The Musician: Cheers.
[00:08:49] The Writer: Cheers, by the way, to love.
[00:08:56] The Writer: Because I was like thinking, what’s the last thing we just said?
[00:08:59] The Musician: You were gonna cheers [00:09:00] to hate?
[00:09:00] The Writer: I don’t wanna cheers to hate. I wanna cheer to all love.
[00:09:02] The Musician: Cheers to all the haters. I choose to love the trolls.
[00:09:07] The Writer: And you know, with inspiration, I was thinking about how sometimes, I’m not sure if you feel this way, even Eric, like about your own art and creating how sometimes there’s a feeling of.
[00:09:25] The Writer: Gosh, I don’t even know the words for it. It’s just like a heavy feeling of just every now and then, you know about just not knowing, you know where it’s gonna go, if it’s gonna become something, like
[00:09:40] The Musician: every time
[00:09:40] The Writer: there’s a lack of hope or something
[00:09:43] The Musician: every time
[00:09:43] The Writer: there sometimes really for you. So for me, a lot of times too, inspiration reminds me that.
[00:09:53] The Writer: You do it to fill myself and with what I love to do, and then [00:10:00] in that moment, that’s where all the energy is and that’s where the, there’s so much there, so much treasure and so much that then. It doesn’t matter that those future moments, you know, of what it becomes or anything, how it touches another person, then it just doesn’t matter.
[00:10:20] The Writer: So like inspiration just has a way of reminding me that I just need to be in the moment with my art,
[00:10:29] The Musician: right? Like you go for unique situations like mystery, you go find, put yourself in a situation where you don’t know what’s gonna happen to surprise yourself. Or to amaze yourself, or you try and it’s like this trick you play on yourself, but then you get to know yourself so well that if you go through the same motions every day and you do the same things every day, you’re not surprised, you’re not amazed.
[00:10:55] The Musician: And taking that leap of faith in [00:11:00] artistic creation, not knowing where an artistic endeavor is gonna go. Is that sort of trick you’re playing on yourself to get to know yourself better, to put yourself in a situation where you don’t know how, how you’ll react, and you don’t know how it’s gonna turn out.
[00:11:12] The Musician: And sometimes you, and
[00:11:13] The Writer: you’ll be surprised, I love being surprised by my art.
[00:11:17] The Musician: And that’s why you have to do more and
[00:11:18] The Writer: by other people’s art.
[00:11:19] The Musician: Yes.
[00:11:19] The Writer: I mean, just by art, like it really does, it has this effect of surprise and amazement like you’re talking about. I really resonate with that.
[00:11:29] The Musician: Well, mystery and you have to be in the moment.
[00:11:30] The Musician: Yeah. Because if you’re not, you miss it. Um, when they find that, uh, time moves faster for people that have, uh, rigid structure in their life, that they do the same thing every day. They, oh my God, the year just went by like a, a, you know, five years went by and I didn’t even know what happened to all the time.
[00:11:51] The Musician: Your mind plays a trick and it actually bridges gaps fast. ’cause it knows what’s gonna happen. Your mind is like, oh, I know where this is going, and it just races to [00:12:00] that moment in time and speeds up time for you. Whereas in something where you don’t know the outcome. Time could be slower and slower and slow down because you actually have to absorb the information.
[00:12:10] The Musician: Your brain has to go, wait, I don’t know what’s gonna happen. So it takes in the information instead of just going, oh, I know where this is going.
[00:12:16] The Writer: Yeah. Like in rather than being automatic, it’s more intuitive and more in your senses. Like taking in
[00:12:27] The Musician: Yeah. You get connected to yourself.
[00:12:28] The Writer: Yeah.
[00:12:28] The Musician: By opening up to that, if you watch a movie over and over again at some point.
[00:12:34] The Musician: They’ve studied. You’re not actually watching the movie, like you’re not taking in the sights with your eyes and the sound with your ears and taking the feelings in. You’re replaying the movie as you saw it previously, however many times you’ve seen it previously, and your mind starts actually filling in the blanks and you’re not watching it.
[00:12:54] The Musician: You’re watching a replay of it through your mind.
[00:12:56] The Writer: Oh,
[00:12:57] The Musician: and that’s where you’re supposed to turn off your thoughts and [00:13:00] not listen to your thoughts because some of them are so untrue because your mind is just going, Hey, here’s a thought that you think when you’re in this situation all the time, and you go, okay, that’s who I am and that’s my thoughts.
[00:13:10] The Musician: And it’s not, it’s just your mind going, assuming, yeah, this is what you’re gonna say. And that’s where you might trick your mind and say something different that you wouldn’t normally have said or, or make questions instead of. Filling in the answers, not making assumptions, being attached and having expectations, and
[00:13:27] The Writer: that’s why I feel like, like rather than living in autopilot like that, what you’re talking about, then we can go to inspiration.
[00:13:38] The Writer: And inspiration actually has, or anything that inspires us, it has this way of helping us to remember ourselves.
[00:13:50] The Musician: And uh people, that’s why people are perfect mirrors. You find good friends and you find people, even just a stranger in life, you talk to and have this weird little connection for a [00:14:00] minute. They’re perfect reflections of you showing back to yourself like the parts you love about yourself.
[00:14:05] The Writer: Oh, like love that.
[00:14:07] The Musician: And the people you resonate with the most are the best mirrors for you, showing you more about yourself.
[00:14:16] The Writer: They’re everywhere. Everywhere.
[00:14:18] The Musician: Go find them. Go find your perfect mirror,
[00:14:22] The Writer: go find them, and then share the stories with us. We would love to hear.
[00:14:30] The Musician: Cheers.
[00:14:30] The Writer: Cheers.
[00:14:34] The Musician: So find your inspiration and make good art as
[00:14:40] The Musician: Neil Gaiman.
[00:14:41] The Musician: Neil Gaiman said, make good art.
[00:14:44] The Writer: Make good art
[00:14:45] The Musician: and there’s a great song by Professor Elemental and Dr. Syntax and oh, his amazing friends
[00:14:50] The Writer: make good art. Yeah.
[00:14:54] The Musician: So back to the original question, do you need inspiration to create art? If the answer is no, [00:15:00] again, if the, it’s an, it’s sort of an inception or, you know, a fractal, like the question has the answers within the question itself.
[00:15:11] The Musician: By simply making art every day, will you find inspiration in the process of making art or in the outcome of your making art? Is there inspiration already embedded within the process itself? So you didn’t need inspiration to begin with, but if you do find inspiration, you might create better art. And the more you do art, you’ll find inspiration in the art itself.
[00:15:39] The Writer: And maybe like that one, there’s that one picture where there’s everything we know. There’s everything we don’t know. There’s everything that we don’t know, that we don’t know, you know, like, like then we have to leave open for inspiration that maybe it’s happening and we don’t know it.
[00:15:59] The Musician: The symbol [00:16:00] ohm and the attainment of your Bindi, your third eye.
[00:16:04] The Musician: In, uh, in, in a culture says you have to be at peace with the things you have control over, at peace with the things you don’t have control over, and at peace with the things you don’t even know about. And that’s the largest part of the equation. It’s a very small piece of the equation, things you have control over.
[00:16:27] The Musician: Another probably larger piece of the equation. The things you don’t have any control over, and the biggest part of it all, you have no idea. Like you have no idea you’re going to walk outside and a bird’s gonna poop on you.
[00:16:40] The Writer: No idea.
[00:16:41] The Musician: You didn’t see that one coming?
[00:16:42] The Writer: No, I would’ve moved the other direction if I knew that was coming.
[00:16:46] The Musician: You said it was good luck.
[00:16:48] The Writer: Oh yeah, you would. I like some. Good luck. You would’ve stepped right
[00:16:50] The Musician: into it.
[00:16:57] The Writer: Maybe I could put my cat there instead. [00:17:00] Like hold her.
[00:17:01] The Musician: Is that, so there you go. When danger is near, take your loved ones and place them in the way. No,
[00:17:11] The Writer: I’m just kidding everyone. She’s on my lap right now and like, I don’t know why I thought of her doing that, but like, ah. I would never do it speckoi, I promise, but really I wanted to share the luck
[00:17:37] The Musician: and luck equals bird poop falling from the sky, the mystery of life,
[00:17:48] The Writer: so mysterious. Which reminds me of a quote by Einstein where he says, the most [00:18:00] beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science.
[00:18:10] The Musician: Wow.
[00:18:11] The Writer: What a gorgeous quote.
[00:18:14] The Musician: It’s funny that art. Or science. Science being a calculated measure of creating the same results. Science is, the goal is to produce the same results over and over again to find truth. Whereas maybe art is not an exact science, not producing the same results, but still finding truth.
[00:18:37] The Writer: Oh, I am so in love with what you just said.
[00:18:41] The Writer: Yeah. And then one just feels more, actually no, both still feel very jaggedy at times.
[00:18:50] The Musician: Well, some people try and put a science to their art and, and. Maybe like songwriters, we’re gonna make a hit song. There’s that show and they have these people that say, oh, well hit [00:19:00] songs. You need to do this, you need to do that. You need to do this. And then you’ll have a hit. Or the 17 people that
[00:19:05] The Writer: calculated, so calculated,
[00:19:07] The Musician: the 17 people that write Beyonce’s music.
[00:19:10] The Writer: Oh, right.
[00:19:11] The Musician: Calculate this is going to be a hit. And it is. It’s a million dollar multimillion dollar hit. Big, big, big deal. But they are following certain rules and going with certain, almost scientific stabs at art.
[00:19:28] The Writer: But like the guy who made acid, what was his name? His last name? Hubbard, I think his first name. Adam,
[00:19:35] The Musician: uh, a a a Abby Hoffman.
[00:19:38] The Writer: Oh, was it Adam. Oh, thanks.
[00:19:40] The Musician: And I don’t think he created acid as much as, as, as discovered. Um. I’d have to look it up. I think it’s a discovery, uh, because the story goes that the ergot of the rye, which is um, rye bread, the rye seed itself would go [00:20:00] bad.
[00:20:00] The Musician: And in that fungus and mold there was this, the science of acid, lysergic acid that would create hallucinations. And I think he found a way to extract it. He discovered a way to put it into a form
[00:20:15] The Writer: and wasn’t it by.
[00:20:17] The Musician: He didn’t like,
[00:20:18] The Writer: you know,
[00:20:18] The Musician: Hey, I just made acid. No one’s ever had it before.
[00:20:20] The Writer: By accident though, it was by more intuitive process.
[00:20:23] The Musician: I’d have to look it up
[00:20:24] The Writer: like an art where you’re not necessarily having a plan and it just happens.
[00:20:32] The Musician: I,
[00:20:32] The Writer: hmm.
[00:20:33] The Musician: Could be. I had, I’d have to look that one up, the story. Um, but I do know at least that it comes from rye. That’s the, the original was,
[00:20:45] The Writer: I didn’t
[00:20:46] The Writer: know that rye bread,
[00:20:46] The Musician: people eating rye bread and the rye went bad.
[00:20:49] The Musician: And the fungus,
[00:20:50] The Writer: oh my gosh. Holy buns.
[00:20:52] The Musician: Now they also say that some people say that language was created by magic mushrooms, like mushrooms in nature, [00:21:00] monkeys going around, found the mushrooms, ate the mushrooms, had these hallucinations of visions and created language as, as such a. An odd thing to say that they, they put meaning into sounds to be able to communicate with each other.
[00:21:20] The Musician: It’s such a high concept for the animal world. Uh, that they,
[00:21:25] The Writer: do you think that their tripping sound is like, aaaaaah,
[00:21:33] The Musician: yeah, that’s exactly last time I tripped with a monkey, that is the exact noise that the monkey made. No, they always
[00:21:41] The Writer: same
[00:21:41] The Musician: we’re, we’re just, we’re just these monkeys on a space rock, you know, communicating our hallucinations to each other in this weird. Voyage that we’re taking
[00:21:53] The Writer: as we drink coffee. Cheers.
[00:21:55] The Musician: Cheers. [00:22:00] We have to thank those adventurous monkeys.
[00:22:07] The Writer: Yeah, thank you.
[00:22:08] The Musician: On their first psychedelic journeys to advance it, it, it supposedly advanced the brain, like created new areas of the brain that then became human. The humans we know today. That was, I believe the evolutionary shift was, uh, psychedelics. That’s why some of these, you know, visionary artists have been, you know, whacked out on psychedelics because they’ve been actually expanding the bounds of art.
[00:22:39] The Musician: Letting go of, of the body, the mind letting go of everything and going out on this exploration to find new realms of art to come back and bring it and show it to us. These people are, are psychonauts. They’re out. Finding the bounds of the mind and the bounds of perception to to go to the [00:23:00] edges, go over the edges, and then, and then bring it back and explain it to us.
[00:23:03] The Musician: Hunter Thompson said the edge, there’s no real way to describe the edge because the only people who know about the edge are the people that have gone over it. You don’t find the actual edge until you go completely over it, because otherwise there could be another ledge. There could be a. An edge that you didn’t see that you, you say, oh, I found the edge and you stopped.
[00:23:23] The Musician: Is that really the edge? When you go over it, you go, yeah, that was the edge, and you fall and go, ah. Or go like the monkey does, raaaaah
[00:23:34] The Writer: or you go flying to some
[00:23:37] The Musician: or you don’t know
[00:23:37] The Writer: some other place,
[00:23:39] The Musician: you have to go over the edge to find out
[00:23:40] The Writer: the imagination or.
[00:23:44] The Musician: We have people like Hunter Thompson to thank for going over the edge and then explaining.
[00:23:48] The Writer: Yeah. I love that quote of his explaining
[00:23:50] The Musician: it to us. Hey, here’s what it is. Here’s what’s o, here’s what’s past the fence.
[00:23:54] The Writer: And that’s something that like you couldn’t even describe, you know, what’s [00:24:00] over the edge. Like you just have to experience it.
[00:24:03] The Musician: True, true. When I would go to festivals and find a spot to camp. Instead of going in the center of everything, I would go out to the edge, go out to some remote remotest, part, the edge, where there’s few people
[00:24:22] The Writer: and there’s only cats.
[00:24:25] The Musician: I would find the fence. I would find the edge. I would find the bounds, the limits, and go to that where you can go, no, no more, and put, set my tent up.
[00:24:36] The Writer: I love when you pitch a tent,
[00:24:41] The Musician: and I’d be so happy during the festival when, when I needed to sort of get away from it all and like download and, and relax and sort of settle and, and you know, you get overstimulated, which is rare for me, but people do get [00:25:00] overstimulated and when you get to that point, you need some space that’s just you and yourself. And I would go to the my tent where the nobody is and chill out and relax and be at peace. And then go, and then
[00:25:12] The Writer: that sounds beautiful.
[00:25:14] The Musician: Go run back into the, to the fracas, the wildness.
[00:25:20] The Writer: The wildness, the fun, all that stimulation, all the inspiration there.
[00:25:25] The Musician: Mm-hmm.
[00:25:25] The Writer: Festivals have so much inspiration, so much from the art there to the people you meet, to the randomness of different experiences.
[00:25:35] The Musician: If you look up the 10 principles of Burning Man, there’s so much in there that is, it’s like a set of rules that can help you create a wonderful community space for this. Magical exploration of the mysterious, the, the inspired, the, the art, the, it creates a good frame for that. The radical [00:26:00] expression, radical gifting, radical self-reliance, radical inclusion.
[00:26:05] The Musician: There’s these, these terms for the principles of Burning Man, which help describe how to get to. A, a place where we can all coexist with all our differences, but in a unified way that also doesn’t hold you back from expressing yourself, hold you back from being a community, hold you back from being yourself.
[00:26:38] The Writer: Yeah.
[00:26:39] The Musician: Accepting others as themselves.
[00:26:42] The Writer: I love it there.
[00:26:43] The Musician: There’s a freedom in these, in these rules. There’s a weird way to say we’ve created these rules, but then with those rules, you now have freedom.
[00:26:51] The Writer: I love festivals. I wanna go like right now you’re talking about all that and I just wanna go to one like so much.
[00:26:59] The Writer: There’s [00:27:00] definitely that remembering I was talking about that happens there at the festivals and. I remember it happening so majorly like years and years ago. Just how safe I felt to just be myself and how welcome that was by other people, and that knowing, that deep, knowing that we’re all just exploring and supporting each other and just being present to one another as we’re doing that. Yeah. And that is so beautiful.
[00:27:37] The Musician: Un unless you dress as a clown.
[00:27:40] The Writer: Oh, that’s right.
[00:27:42] The Musician: If are you, I, I, that’s your
[00:27:46] The Writer: traumatic experience.
[00:27:47] The Musician: It wasn’t, it was. No, it wasn’t trauma. It was trauma for,
[00:27:51] The Writer: I think you talked about it in the last podcast.
[00:27:53] The Musician: I did.. But it’s not a trauma for me, it was a trauma for them, but I think it’s just so interesting.
[00:27:59] The Musician: [00:28:00] That there’s radical inclusion and radical acceptance and radical self-expression, but clowns are sort of like off the map.
[00:28:09] The Writer: It’s like this. It’s definitely not unconditional.
[00:28:12] The Musician: People would walk away like, I can’t take it. Oh my God, clown like, and yeah, there’s two kinds of people in the world. People who hate clowns
[00:28:21] The Musician: and clowns.
[00:28:22] The Writer: Well then I want to take this moment to cheers to clowns.
[00:28:32] The Musician: And all the other people that are not clowns.
[00:28:35] The Writer: Yeah. We, we embrace you all.
[00:28:38] The Musician: Be you clown or not clown,
[00:28:40] The Writer: do your thing.
[00:28:42] The Musician: Exactly.
[00:28:45] The Writer: Oh, what else to talk about inspiration. Oh, what,
[00:28:51] The Musician: or can you even, I mean, we’re talking about all this. And [00:29:00] getting nowhere near defining it seems like an infinite,
[00:29:03] The Writer: yeah. What is the actual definition of inspiration like in the dictionary?
[00:29:07] The Musician: Oh, I don’t know about that.
[00:29:10] The Writer: I’m curious.
[00:29:12] The Musician: But I think there is, I think there’s a fractal quality and maybe, you know, to a lot of things, but to inspiration. I think there’s a, a fractal, qua fractal quality again, to where inspiration. Breeds more inspiration and a lack of inspiration breeds inspiration, and I think it’s just an inherent quality.
[00:29:34] The Musician: I think imagination, inspiration, these things exist within you, and while if you exercise them more, you might get more out of it. I think it’s just inherent. I think life in itself is inspiring, like life wants you. Your inspiration and needs it, like our ultimate goal [00:30:00] is finding out more about ourselves.
[00:30:03] The Musician: And to do that, we need inspiration and imagination to go out into the mysterious and be surprised and amazed, and find our individual unique reactions. And then. Putting that together into a larger experience than when all of our reactions are common. We start to learn more about ourselves and each other, and that mirror reflection that we’re talking about, finding good mirrors and finding good reflections, the more we find out about ourselves through the mysterious, all that does fractally is create more mystery and more inspiration, more imagination,
[00:30:44] The Writer: more design.
[00:30:46] The Musician: You don’t ever resolve it
[00:30:47] The Writer: in our connections.
[00:30:48] The Musician: You go to the next room and there’s more. And then when you’ve like, almost like an escape room, oh, we found the way out, and you go to the next and oh no, it’s another room where you have to find the key. And when you find the key [00:31:00] go through the door, you look back and you were there the whole time.
[00:31:05] The Musician: It’s, it’s, it is a, uh, infinite, infinite loop of. Uh, finding your inspiration, imagination, and uncovering mysteries will only bring up more questions, unanswered questions than you’ll find,
[00:31:23] The Writer: which gives such a hunger. I feel like
[00:31:26] The Musician: Insatiable hunger.
[00:31:28] The Writer: Insatiable hunger,
[00:31:29] The Musician: an infinite journey, which isn’t, it’s finite, but then there’s an infinity within each of us.
[00:31:38] The Musician: There’s an infinite depth to every human experience,
[00:31:43] The Writer: almost as if we’re all like hungry and inspired to fulfill our potential, which inside of the word potential is the word potent.
[00:31:55] The Musician: Right.
[00:31:56] The Writer: And I love that there is such a potency [00:32:00] to everything you’re saying and that like drive that there’s a inner force that moves.
[00:32:11] The Writer: Moves us.
[00:32:12] The Musician: Even people that don’t get inspired, that don’t seek mysteries. People that are sort of turned off to all that and do nothing, doing absolutely nothing is in itself also an answer. Like, um, Rush said in the, in the song, free will, if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice. Mm-hmm.
[00:32:33] The Musician: You have freedom of, of will, even if you don’t exert it. That in itself is your freedom.
[00:32:41] The Writer: But are they having as much fun as
[00:32:44] The Musician: that’s a judgment?
[00:32:44] The Writer: Other people?
[00:32:45] The Musician: That’s a judgment.
[00:32:46] The Writer: That’s true. No, I’m just questioning
[00:32:48] The Musician: how wonderful.
[00:32:49] The Writer: It’s just a question.
[00:32:50] The Musician: Ignorance is bliss. How, how wonderful it would be to, to not have the frustration of an artist to try to find
[00:32:57] The Writer: damn, okay.
[00:32:58] The Musician: Inspiration. To try to find [00:33:00] meaning, to try to find how, how beautiful would it be to not. , to be at peace, like the stillness of a, of a, of the mind, the meditation, to find that still empty space, would that not be as valid as somebody that finds, you know, the rest of the world that’s not at peace, that’s not quiet, that’s not that.
[00:33:21] The Musician: to keep going.
[00:33:23] The Writer: Yeah. In
[00:33:23] The Musician: that chaos, is it then not. A beauty of itself to find a nothing, a stillness, a calma peace, a a complete just being.
[00:33:37] The Writer: Kind of like the other day when you and I were on the couch and I said something like, like, we can do something else if you’re bored just sitting here, and we were just listening to music together and really feeling the music and listening to the words.
[00:33:57] The Writer: Feeling the musicality of, and the [00:34:00] moment too, it was like really windy outside and the trees were, we could hear everything blowing. There were wind charms and it was just so beautiful just to like, I was feeling really inspired just sitting there and not doing anything. Just listening to music and being with you like any other person, if they were looking at us, they might be like, oh, they’re.
[00:34:27] The Writer: You know, kind of like what I said, which wasn’t a judgment, but it was just asking like, are they not having as much fun? Like might
[00:34:33] The Musician: as somebody that would be dancing or,
[00:34:35] The Writer: yeah, or like going wild, like with energy, like very um, extroverted energy that is very obvious in everything we know about having fun, you know, but like someone could be having brilliant fun that’s just sitting there.
[00:34:55] The Writer: Not really doing much on the outside, but on the inside is where all the [00:35:00] energy is. You know,
[00:35:02] The Musician: like at concerts I would, you know, not dance and sometimes I couldn’t even clap at the end of a song and people all instinctively like bang their hands together and clap and applause and yay. But for me it was like, I’m just feeling it.
[00:35:21] The Musician: So I would do nothing. But they would say, are you enjoying it? I’d be like. More than you can imagine. But there’s so much going on the inside, but the outside, not so much.
[00:35:31] The Writer: Oh, I love it. Oh, and with that said, we’re gonna say our goodbyes for the day. And I’m gonna clap really, really loud, and Eric’s not gonna clap at all.
[00:35:47] The Musician: I’m clapping on the inside.
[00:35:53] The Writer: We love you.
[00:35:54] The Musician: Cheers.
[00:35:55] The Writer: [00:36:00] Cheers.