This is not a new concept, and maybe it’s not at all profound, but art inspires art. It’s a bit magical, really, that everyone has the capability of conveying feeling through creation, and in turn, influencing the minds of others.
The writing of ekphrastic poetry, for example, has been around for centuries. “Ekphrasis” is simply the art of writing poetry about paintings.
Two well-known examples are:
“Musée des Beaux Arts” (1938) by W.H. Auden
“…In Brueghel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the plowman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on…”
The Starry Night” by (1961) Anne Sexton
“…The town does not exist
except where one black-haired tree slips
up like a drowned woman into the hot sky.
The town is silent. The night boils with eleven stars.
Oh starry starry night! This is how
I want to die…”
But the forms of art that inspire other forms of art are not limited to poetry and paintings. I myself have written a piece of short fiction that was inspired by a song.
There isn’t anything daunting or complicated about it. All one must do is tune in to their creativity and explore that which speaks to them. When something inspires you, words will flow and your mind will be stimulated. As people, we aren’t all that unique in that no two people think in the same frequencies. It’s the exact opposite. As humans, we have so many shared experiences, perspectives, and appreciations, but so few of us communicate about them! We all must start voicing our thoughts even if we do not think them to be original enough to share. In a sense, originality is overrated. Instead, we need to be connecting with one another, so we are not so alone in this world and in life.
If interested, you can find my aforementioned fiction piece, “And She Was,” here. It is proudly inspired by the Talking Heads song under the same title. And now it has been published and become an art in its own right.
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