Inspiration Motivation

Divinely Inspired Divine Inspiration

Divine inspiration… It’s the vital ingredient of creativity, but what exactly is this thing called inspiration? Psychoanalyst Adam Phillips seeks its source while diverse artists from all fields reveal how the muse strikes them … from poet Andrew Motion and his ‘ritual pencil’ to singer Beth Orton and her big pink hat

Sunday March 12, 2006
The Observer

Adam Phillips for Observer Review
Waiting for inspiration … Adam Phillips
Photograph: Andy Hall

If the word “inspiration” is to have any meaning,’ TS Eliot wrote, ‘it 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.’ Eliot has a slight doubt about whether the word has any meaning, or any meaning now, because inspiration is something that only originally made sense in a religious context. 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; and you may even have an idea about what you can do to invoke it - make sacrifices, do ritual incantations, live ascetically, take drugs, sit down at your desk at the same time every morning, and so on.

But for the more secular-minded there is not much language to talk about inspiration without beginning to sound a bit mystical, reliant on some powerful source or force that can’t quite be named but can’t quite be ignored.