Personal thoughts on language and inspiration

My day is often full of reading, at times looking up things, writing them down. But it is not often that some sentences truly inspire and send me to the blank screen. Sometimes they do. Sometimes one has to wonder about inspiration. Is it an inclination or an opening in self, or is it truly something external, something of its own beauty that creates an answering response in us? I tend to think that it is something beautiful on its own rather than something to do with us. We are truly fortunate when we come across these slices of beauty. For me, often it is with language and its constructions. There is this mystery of the origin of thought, which ties itself up with the origins of consciousness, language, and the difficult beautiful pleasures of tough, disciplined effort. I also get lost in these wanderings, wondering about what kind of effort – of the width, the breadth of thought, and then the depth of thought, its subject matter the entirety of existence. With such lofty subject matter, the mountain peak clear, one’s gaze is held quite well. Little things come up, bother, and at times one is just lost in the woods, but then somewhere in some slice of writing of a beautiful soul, one glimpses it, the mountain peak, the inspiration, and everything is right way up.


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Often it is the good sense of the thought, the loftiness of ideals, and then a command of language without any frills, how to put it? A simplicity of expression yet depth of thought and profundity and loftiness of what is being said. All this said with good sense perhaps can spell beauty, and perhaps can inspire the reader.

(I have been going through Library book haul – Michael Wood introducing essays and reviews by Bernard Williams – some quotes in intro sent me here.)


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Often times I may or may not read those authors – it is a long long collection of writings from LRB, NYRB, reviews and essays. It becomes a difficult aspiration and an act of formidable concentration to read through. Esp when I have 20 other open books each with 5 pages marker at times. Daily I seem to switch patterns. I finished a few half-read books recently. Many others are open. The hunger is little about reading, or writing, it is about being with language, thought, its constructs, either through inspiration, here, or through words, reading far and wide. The only reminder I often give myself is read slowly. Perhaps the other reminder needed is while you are reading something, only that for that moment, and it is ok to not have a finished book at the end of the journey. It is difficult to measure inspiration. Like mountain sighting. Ideally the path brings it in your view often and often. So carve the path such that almost unknowingly (because knowing weighs down the whole enterprise with expectations which is just not fun then), you sight the mountain. In short, keep reading the way you do, just slowly and without the weight of finishing books or even writing about them. Inspiration found will send you here hopefully. (Note to self)


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So this, that the hunger is about words, language, loftiness of thought, the ability of words to move us so, that we be ready to move mountains, the magic inherent in words, and just the joy of beauty found in language. Language that grapples with existence and its mysteries.