What does it mean to be inspired these days? Perhaps the better question is: What does it take to become inspired these days? Are you inspired when you get out of bed in the morning? When you get to work? When you accomplish the same task you complete weekly, daily, hourly? How about when you achieve a more challenging goal? Maybe music can inspire you? Gawd, let’s hope so. If not, you’re already dead. This isn’t a Nike commercial or an advertisement for Gatorade. You won’t see images of Michael Jordan hitting a jump-shot at the buzzer, Mohammed Ali training in a ring soaked in sweat, or Drew Brees winning the Superbowl. All you have here to inspire you is a symphony of sound and black words on a screen. But that’s enough.
Here we go.
Inspire – made up of two words: “in” meaning to enter; and “spire” a derivative of “spirit” which refers to the soul in most definitions but has a more literal Latin root of “breath.” Therefore, the exact etymological function of inspiration is “to breath life into something.”
And what has the power to do that? What thing out there, whether artificial or real, can breathe life into you and revive you from an otherwise mundane way of being? Is it music? Words? Images? People? Sport? Competition? Challenge? Victory?
Does it really matter?
We all need a little inspiration sometimes. Who cares where it comes from. Perhaps today it will come from reading this post or hearing this song, and tomorrow it will come from seeing a little kid share his candy with someone. Perhaps it is heard in the guitar sounds of Kevin Drew and Brendan Canning, and in the drumming of Justin Peroff. Maybe it lies in the reels of a film or bites of a Youtube vid. It doesn’t matter where the breath is born, just that you open the windows to your soul so that the breeze can come in. You can’t see it, but you can sense its existence. There is inspiration all around you, everyday. Don’t look for it, because it's not physically there. It’s invisible—-spire. Inhale it.
Dare to rise with the sun I often say. Dare to do something different today, something unruly, something desired and desirable, an act to be made jealous of, a cry into thyself that has everyone around you twist his or her thoughts in puzzlement. The question posed, “Man, what got into her?” is the right one. New breath. New life. New spirit. New Being. Quit the pattern; abandon the routine, even if only for a moment. Music is therapy for the living dead; sound is its emotion.
I can’t inspire you, and neither can Broken Social Scene. We can only supply you with the oxygen. They blow it out of the speakers and I whisper it off the screen and into the air surrounding you. But then it’s beyond us. We leave it there, floating colorless and unseen. It’s a temptation, an invitation, a provocation, an invocation. But you have to inhale it; you have to be willing to suck it all up until your lungs can’t take it, and then draw in a little more. Drink in the spirited air like it was your last glass of wine. Suck back as if it was your final breath before diving deep into the sea of your desires. Hold that creative spirit in your lungs, letting it travel to all parts of your mind and body, and then don’t let it go.
Tempo change and back to the original four-note melody. Broken Social Scene reminding us what it feels like to live inside of a scream. Exhaling sounds that are available for the taking.
I can’t describe the music for you. I often try, but how does one even attempt to wordify sound? Listen to the song. Read the words. Become inspired yourself. This isn’t a force-feeding and I aint supplying no I.V. Drink what dare you.
Leave the rest untouched. Us inhuman ones want more; we are gluttons for inspiration inebriation.
Hear how powerful the symphony is. Remember what it was like to see live music for the first time, to dance uninhibited as a toddler, to giggle as a child, to be in love as a grade-schooler, to waiver drunkenly as a teen, to get high with your friends, to be a part of victory, to chase romance like a fool, to hold your newborn in the hospital, to hear the word “grandpa.”
Rave on.
Billy Blake: “The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.” If you don’t want the ride, that’s fine. But then get off the fuckin’ highway. Stop suckin’ in my oxygen. Turn this music off. Go back to the safe haven of recycled air.
As for the rest of you, meet me in the basement. Kevin and I are takin’ turns with the Hookah; Brendan’s got his own pipe.
Breath in. Breath in. Breath in.
