Commonsense

I tried a few times to be inspired, ha, ha! To be motivated, for creativity and imagination to flow forth like the gushing rapids of the mighty rivers, consigning boulders fallen eons ago from exploding stars and  the land around, into awe. I tried, awaited with curiosity, but in vain! And kip engulfed me at all such instances, mastering my senses and physique pushing me gently into sanguine comfort and gay abandon. To wake up at dawn, an ordinary mortal more conscious of one’s limitation  Nature assigned. I tried for those moments of hallucination that great men of letters and art are alleged to have underwent, triggering their imagination and lay down in words, and visuals that we commoners devour, enjoy, cherish and fantasize.

Absinthe was consumed by Somerset Maugham. Did that help him in his literary exploits? Did the “Moon and six pence” evolve out of the hallucinations Absinthe might trigger? It is alleged that Lewis Carol had his moments of freakish fantasies. And “Alice in Wonderland” was the offshoot of such bouts. I could not find in my brief reading of his biography that he was assisted externally in his fantastic imaginative creations. Eric Clapton’s affairs with Vodka are too fearsome to look into. I wonder if the spirit stimulated him to be creative or if it was intimidating. Nearer home we have had the famous lyricists Vayalar Rama Varma and Kannadasan who it is said had to be enslaved by the spirit to produce creative diamonds, which they did while alive. The late John Abraham was one such who had to be influenced by external stimulants and the late poet Ayappan. Yes indeed the films and the poems that were created by them were too powerful for it to be the bizarre work of intoxicants.

And it happened the inspiration arrived and dawned as realization. Sitting back one night after a few glasses of whiskey, it was vivid, “and the moral of that is—Be what you would seem to be—or, if you’d like it put more simply—never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise.” (Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland)