On Inspiration

Usually, I find "inspiring" aphorisms/tales/images corny, irritating, and insincere, displaying a childish - and rationally untenable - belief in mystical coincidence (why should the Universe be conspiring anything relatively to a specific individual? The Universe doesn't care.). 

On the contrary, this article by Jeffrey Eugenides - one of my favourite authors, with three extraordinary books to his name which you should definitely read - about his personal struggles to finish novels and about the bizarre mental events that gave him strength to do so is very honest, filled with self-deprecating humour, and a clear awareness of the way we are, in the end, responsible for our own strength. I find our human ability to create dreams to chase, to select and organise events in a coherent whole, to construct a meaning for ourselves to hang on to, a source of endless wonder. 

As Eugenides puts it, inspiration

was me, breathing into myself, in order to breathe out again in a flow of words. 

A beautiful corollary of this is the gracious gift of inspiration - the self turns into itself, but eventually projects a new light into the world. Out of our fundamental solitude, maybe bonds with others can be built.

(though I seem to have forgotten how - but then again, I must be the one to build my own inspiration)

It is curious how much of this humble, generous attitude surfaces in Eugenides' books. Probably his fundamental kindness and humanity towards his characters, giving them roots in an imperfect emotional reality which rings so true, are what make his novels so absorbing and relatable. But there is more to his books than the joy of identifying with the characters and of his restrained, but powerfully atmospheric, use of language. They breathe love. 

In The Virgin Suicides, the distant, adolescent love which tragically leaves the girls untouched, frozen forever in their youthful deaths; in Middlesex, the bonds and knots of family love of love as basic life supports; in The Marriage Plot, love in tension with independence and with social structures. These are inspiring portraits of the power - and weakness - of human connections, and they make me hungry to seek their presence.