IndieSouth

In 1976, Stephen Hawking calculated that when a black hole forms, it starts losing mass by radiating energy. Eventually, the black hole kind of dissolves. The problem with that is a fundamental law of Quantum Physics, which says that all ‘information’ must be preserved, and can never be destroyed. (You can consider ‘information’ to mean whatever makes any bit of matter what it is. Like the blueprint of an atom, in a way.) Hawking’s results showed that the energy radiating from the black hole contains no information about the matter in the black hole, and that once the black hole has dissolved, nothing is left. He presented his findings, and for over 25 years, people have been trying to solve this paradox.

I think inspiration might work a little like this. People speak of times when they are really in tune with their writing, so that it feels like they are channeling the story. Others speak of suffering writer’s block - an inability to tap into their creativity. I think there are people, places, things and ideas that inspire us, and act like inspirational black holes - attracting and sucking in vast amounts of ideas for us to use. The trick is to see how close we can get to that vortex, and glean the ideas radiating out from the edges. The closer we get, the more forceful the experience is.

However, its not like we can just walk up to our source and reach up and take what comes. We may not be sure of where our ’source’ is. If we do know, we have to work to get close enough to catch that radiating energy. Isn’t there always some force repelling us away? We strive and take what we can catch. Rarely we get really close, and get swept up in the flow of inspirational energy. Other times we’re not strong enough to overcome that repellent force. The energy doesn’t reach us. But does that mean it is gone? Is there no hope?

In 2004, Hawking offered a solution to his paradox. He said that the edges of the black holes (the ‘event horizon’) are a little fuzzy, and could allow information to escape the black hole. As for information that does actually go into the center of the black hole, it comes back out in a parallel universe. So simple!

The further you go into the unknowns of science, you get closer to the realm of faith. You look at what you can see and test, and trust that things will continue according to those rules in those dusty, murky, unknown places. Inspiration is the same. You put a sentence together, and it obeys the rules of grammar. It conveys a clear idea. You have succeeded! You do it again. And again. Hoping that if you keep playing by those rules, you will end up with brilliance. Sometimes, you do. When you don’t, you have still carved a path into the unknown. You have ruled out one possibility in an infinity of possibilities. There is hope after all!

So, what’s the point? There’s probably something brilliant here somewhere. Descartes postulated that God recreates the world from zero every instant. So at the very least, all of the time that I have spent writing this post does not cost me any potential inspiration if I turned my mind toward creative writing. IF he was right.

Or maybe I’m just rationalizing my fear of committing energy toward something that can be judged artistically.

You tell me.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 11th, 2007 at 5:39 pm and is filed under Muse(ings). You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.