In EmunahSpeak:
Swordfish, we asked from whence
creative people derived their inspiration and we concluded that:
There is no
muse, no inner voice, no well spring of creativity from which writers,
composers, artists, and the like draw their inspiration. And you can
throw in doctors and such for good measure. Every word, note, brush
stroke, and diagnosis is spoon fed to those so endowed by Hashem.
Not exactly an ego
booster for the kochi
v’otzem yadi crowd, but we’re not running a self esteem clinic here, so
deal with it.
Then we queried:
Endowed by
Hashem to do what exactly? If every jot and tittle is by way of Hashem
then what separates the creative personality from the unwashed masses?
Fair question this
and we answered:
In much the
same way that a given radio frequency can pull in a broadcast set to that
frequency, creative people have been hard wired from the get go of their
existence to process the creative flashes that Hashem is sending them.
It’s not that a writer has been given the ability to write. He has rather
been blessed with the genius to take Divine dictation because it’s all from
Hashem, typos included.
I wrote it, to
be sure, but as it turns out I didn’t fully comprehend the import of what I was
saying. Looking back, it’s apparent now
that my grasp of the words was only intellectual whereas emotionally I was
still treading water.
Recently, I
wrote a piece in which ninety-five per cent of the words belonged to someone
else. I had given proper attribution to
the originator of the ideas that I was quoting in addition to repositioning
several paragraphs, not to mention adding a few key stage directions that took
the piece somewhat past the original thrust of my source material.
Nevertheless, I
still felt unfulfilled in that there were too many of yenem’s words and not
enough of my own.
In the words my
own are subsumed a fundamental misunderstanding of much of what
we wrote in EmunahSpeak:
Swordfish, the essential
paragraphs of which were quoted above.
When we said, it’s
not that a writer has been given the ability to write. He has rather been
blessed with the genius to take Divine dictation because it’s all from Hashem,
typos included, I failed to realize that Hashem challenges the creative
individual with what are seemingly two voices. Sometimes He feeds me yenem’s words to be
manipulated however slightly and other times He feeds me words which I am
foolish enough to think are my own.
But in reality they’re
neither.
Hashem is sole
master of the inspirational vocabulary for as we said above, every word,
note, brush stroke, and diagnosis is spoon fed to us by Hashem and they
belong to Him and Him alone.
