where inspiration is drawn from

July 11, 2007

Some wonder where I get my inspiration from concerning my blogging, video, photography, music and so on.

Basically put, it’s whatever sparks my creative spirit.

I’ll attempt to explain what that means.

Let’s say I’m reading Jason Scott’s blog. I found out about him thru the BBS Documentary, then went to his site, found his blog and subscribed to it in my feed reader.

The guy knows BBS’s (obviously). I ran a BBS.

The guy knows arcade machines. I owned one once (nothing special, just a Mortal Kombat 3 in a standard JAMMA case). One day I aim to get a newly-built cocktail table version of Ms. Pac-Man.

Side note: I heard from an arcade renovator once that the most desired arcade machine of all time is Tempest. This is probably because it’s a visually stunning vector-screen system, but I dunno. Been meaning to e-mail Scott to see if this is true. And no, I have no desire to own a Tempest machine. I’ll take a Ms. Pac-Man first. How much is one new? Oh, about a cool $3,075 for the cocktail table version. :-)

BMI Gaming just happens to be in Boca Raton, FL which is about four hours away from me. I haven’t gone yet, because if I went in I’d probably exit at least $2,500 poorer. (ha!)

The guy does video. I do video.

So anyway, I may read something on his blog about computer or arcade history or whathaveyou and get inspired from that to write up a tune. For example, a recent post of his showed some rendered Tron images (which are, said honestly, fantastic). From seeing that I thought about the cool electronic music that was in Tron, then sat in front of my Alesis Fusion after that and mashed the plastic ivories for a while.

My point is that you need not draw inspiration from like sources, meaning you don’t have to listen to other music just to write your own. You just go with whatever spawns creativity within you.

The same can be said for my photography and blogging. Maybe I’ll hear something and venture out to capture that thought in a photo. Maybe I’ll see something and want to write about it.

I figure it this way: Why paint yourself in a corner concerning what you draw your creativity from?


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