worth a thousand words

I absolutely love this drawing. It's by Adrian Tomine, and it's the cover of the Nov. 8, 2004 issue of The New Yorker. I've had it up on my wall ever since I first found it my senior year of high school, because it makes me feel better about absolutely everything.

Two subway cars pass each other, and a passenger from each looks up at the same time to see the other reading the same book. If the encounter had been just a little bit different, perhaps the two would have had a conversation. Or maybe they would have just pretended not to notice their commonalities, as humans often tend to do. Instead, they are separated with little chance of finding each other again, but they have one magnetic moment that may change how they think for the rest of the day or year.

A picture is worth a thousand words. Or, at least, this one is.

This picture makes me feel better about everything because it reminds me that no matter how unique your experiences are, or how alone you feel... there is someone (possibly closer to you than you think) who is feeling the same way or thinking the same thing, or even understanding something about you that you might think no one else gets. And sometimes, because of the circumstances, you'll never know this, but regardless, that person exists.

I have had many moments lately (and throughout my life, too) that make me feel that I don't understand anyone, or that no one understands me. This happens frequently, especially when I'm un-grounded from the truths that I usually believe in so firmly. But always, usually in the most unexpected context, someone reminds me. Everything is only one thing, the secret of the universe is that it is all connected, the differences between us are only superficial.

Sometimes it is a phone call I receive exactly as I think of the person who is calling me. Sometimes it is a conversation I have with the person in line near me at the supermarket, or the line of a song that comes up in shuffle mode on iTunes. Sometimes, it is one of those "subway glances" that occur at the most inopportune time but still is an expression of some kind of innate perfection that exists in the universe.

I'm sure that everyone has these moments. I think a lot of them are ignored, unfortunately. I wish that everyone would take time to acknowledge them when they do happen, because they are a good reminder of all of these things. We're not alone. We're all one. Alone. Allone. All one.

poetry

I forgot.

The woman that talked about inspiration also showed us this:


And I love it. There are seven more like it on YouTube and you should check those out, too. The animation is so well done and the poetry is wonderful, too.

I used to think I hated poetry, because all I had heard was stuffy-sounding rhyming formulaic cliché crap.

Then I started listening to good music and I realized that good song lyrics are actually just poetry set to music. Pretty elementary deduction there, but it took me a while to grasp it. And then I was more willing to read other poetry. And now I like it. In fact, I love it, and the good stuff is kind of like a drug, I want to read more of it. But at the same time that I want to read more of it, I want to go do crazy shit. Like write novels or paint murals or build life-size sculptures of dinosaurs.

I suppose this is what that woman meant when she said that inspired thought leads to more creation.


ps. I still don't like the majority of old, rhyming, formulaic poetry. I've figured out that I do like some of it, though, I just have to be in the right mood.

inspiration as a way of life

I have been meaning for quite a long time now to move beyond the world of MySpace blogging. Although it serves its purpose, it is still, well, MySpace. I like that my friends can read my blogs there easily, but what about my oh-so-chic friends who have moved beyond the MySpace world? MySpace is just not a very socially acceptable blogging locale, so now I have this instead.

Also, a guest speaker from the advertising department came to my journalism class today. I'm usually pretty snarky when it comes to advertising people and their creations, but this woman actually impressed me. She talked about the inspiration writers need to create, and how "the whole point of writing is idea collecting." And she talked about how all good writers keep track of their inspired thoughts.

She also talked about inspiration as a way of life. Like, instead of walking down the street being like, there's the bank, and that girl from my math class, and, oh look, a STOP sign with "Bush" written on it... you would still see all of those things, but instead of just registering them on some low level, they'd go right into the machine and you would start creating content from them. Whether this content is an ad, a painting, an article, a poem doesn't matter so much as the fact that you are collecting ideas.

At the very least, this blog will serve as a good idea collector for me. And, hopefully, the ideas I collect will be interesting to other people, too, and I will not become just another blogger of the useless variety.