Insanity versus Inspiration
To seek inspiration is to risk insanity
Spending a long period of time alone with our thoughts can lead to one of two extremes: insanity or inspiration.
In prison, solitary confinement is employed as a form of punishment. But in most spiritual traditions, isolation is sought out as a means to transcend.
Many of life’s opposing concepts lie at the end of the same path. Both insanity and inspiration are breakdowns of reality; it’s just that the first is understood to be harmful, and the latter transcendent.
In order to achieve the positive, we must risk falling victim to the negative. This is always the case when creating art. To sit alone in a room and face a blank page is to take the first step along this path. And perhaps, this is why it’s such a deceptively hard thing to do. Our intuition understands that such an inward journey has the power to either break us or free us.
This week, take this risk in a small dose. Sit in a quiet room alone with nothing but a piece of paper and a pen. Focus on something in your life that you’ve been avoiding, something that needs planning, working out, reflecting on. Try to choose something you’d normally solve through outward, less isolated action. Then set a timer for thirty minutes, and risk insanity for inspiration.
Notice what shifts.
The Atom(Filmation, 1967)
Norm Prescott
Norm Prescott produced heroic animations for the 20th century.