“Inspiration must mean just this, that the speaker or writer is uttering something that he does not wholly understand – or which he may even misinterpret when the inspiration has departed from him.” T.S. Eliot

I think Eliot and all of us doubt if the word “inspiration” has any meaning. If you are a religious believer of any denomination you know, or at least you have words for, where your inspiration comes from, however mysterious it may seem; But for many there is not much language to talk about inspiration without beginning to sound a bit mystical or relying on a Powerful source that can’t quite be named but can’t quite be ignored, and yet inspiration is a word no one is shy of using now, even though they are not that keen to explain how it might work.

I can’t answer the inspiration question well because I’m inspired by almost everything. I read as much as I can and try to always keep my eyes and ears open. Today in a brainstorm I was inspired by the Powers of Life and what in bring to us as experience.

Ultimately my belief is that anything can be inspiring.

So when I think about inspiration, I think about understanding that anything can be inspiration. Most of us grow up believing that learning must be boring. A teacher must stand in front of the class and teach us through some incredibly dry textbook (and as a teacher I must say: if the teacher is not inspired to teach, the pupil wont be inspired to learn). We get so much more out of those times when we’re engaged in an activity.

Inspiration is the kind of magic that people like to believe in, perhaps especially now, in a culture where money can buy virtually everything else of value, and science and technology can create or invent the things we most need. But, it reassures us, or at least reminds us, that some of the best things about us are beyond our control.

Inspiration may not belong to us, but it is only we who can be inspired. (and it is only we who can spoil it   )

I think (and my opinion may be very disturbing here) we have glamorized inspiration, idealized the artist possessed a special vision of the world, in a way we don’t see it.

Just as you can’t try and have a dream, or decide beforehand what it will be, inspired work, just happen based on the person’s life per se.

When Keats wrote that poetry must come as easily as leaves to a tree, or Picasso said, ‘I don’t seek, I find’, they were both reminding us, that inspiration is beyond the realm of calculated intentions.

I think, all we need it to be receptive to the unfamiliar; and we need to be able to wait, without certainty, for the thing we want. This, in a sense, is the faith of the believer in artistic inspiration.

{Inspiration} lays in my mind
As a patchwork of colors.
I see it. Recorded in pieces of life,
a complete work made of moments.

If it is beauty, it´s innocence.
If it is body, it´s lust, temptation.
If I´m thirsty, it´s a spring
if I have hunger, bread.

It gives me agile fluency
If the paper wants to be empty.
It is a muse of emergency.

It comes in the night, sometimes in the day;
it’s inspiration that creates the cadence.
If it doesn’t come … the poetry is gone.

Aline Inspired Martins

PS: apart from my faith, books, music and love…there are other things worthy sharing…these things really inspire me…

When I dance (Aline-Brazil- 2008)

My cats and nature in general (Dana and Her babies 2007)

My friends (here only the girls gathered for a Tea Party, but love them all!)

My Parents

and my only Brother and Best friend Andre