(English version only)
Whenever
I have the time and savings for it, I love going on inspiration
trips.
Typically I will have nothing else planned than just walking around, visiting museums, eating cake and drinking coffee and do whatever I want to do :). That is of course a wild luxury in and of itself. But apart from the obvious extravaganza of time on your own, something great happens inside your head when you're away on your own in a place with no obligations for a few days.
Sometimes, however, the trips don’t work out as planned. I’ve recently come home from a trip to London, where I had signed up for a fancy writing course in the holy halls of The Guardian. I had been looking forward to this for months!
Typically I will have nothing else planned than just walking around, visiting museums, eating cake and drinking coffee and do whatever I want to do :). That is of course a wild luxury in and of itself. But apart from the obvious extravaganza of time on your own, something great happens inside your head when you're away on your own in a place with no obligations for a few days.
Sometimes, however, the trips don’t work out as planned. I’ve recently come home from a trip to London, where I had signed up for a fancy writing course in the holy halls of The Guardian. I had been looking forward to this for months!
Unfortunately
I caught sick before going. Twice actually. First I got sick, then I
had one day of being ok-ish. Then I got really sick.
Can’t-stand-on-my-legs sick. But not wanting to miss out I dragged
myself on the plane to England, made sure to sit a bit isolated from
others and ate a pound of oranges once I reached my hotel.
Things
were looking up. I felt better and went to bed early to be ready for
class the next day. Unfortunately, both my neighbor and the people staying in
the room above had other plans. The walls were paper-thin and these
people were gifted with exceptionally loud voices. Loud in the way
where you can hear them droning on all the time and you can make out
a few words here and there, but not enough to hear what they are
talking about and it drives you insane, because if you’re awake
anyway and their conversation is the entertainment you’re forced to
have, you might as well listen in on it. I also found that not only
were they late talkers, they were also really early risers. And had a
fondness for dragging furniture around.
Anyway,
I’m sure I slept some because, I woke up at some point with the
unwelcome and well-known to those affected, tingling sensation of not
one, but two cold sores on my upper lip. I looked in the mirror and
tried to tell myself that maybe they were bigger in my head than to
the rest of the world and if I just slapped a few cold sore patches
on and stayed away from eating, drinking or touching anything, I’d
be fine to go attend the writing course.
And
it was actually good I did, because apart from feeling like a plague-ridden
eye sore, I got a lot of good takeaways from the course and even
managed to say hi to a few of the other participants (while keeping a
safe distance) and converse about writing :). After that the rest of
the trip was mainly about recovering and trying to get some sleep,
far from my usual level of activity when going on these trips.
And now comes the actual point of this post (sorry for taking so long getting here). Because was it worth it, you might ask, going on a trip, while mostly just sleeping, being sick, and trying to recover? If you can’t even go for long walks, visit places or hang out with people? And I’ll reply yes! Yes it was. If for nothing else then for those small pockets of time going from A to B and taking in new sights and sounds, where your brain is just eating it all up and spitting out ideas as fast as your eyes can provide material. Returning to my initial point about that great thing that happens inside your head, whenever you are away, I think that's what I go on these trips for. To switch my brain into inspiration mode without even thinking about it, where all inputs are automatically turned into ideas. From sci-fi to realism, from words to pictures, from pieces of dialogue to world building ideas. What if some of the people passing by are actually Gods, assigned super powers by future scientists? Or what if that girl walking a bit away from her group of friends secretly longs to be at the center of the group and sometimes steals things from the others and keeps them in a closet at home to feel closer to them? Or if the young woman on the other sidewalk is practicing sentences in her head, so she can impress her boss at work and flirt with her crush, but every time she opens her mouth everything comes out as dinosaur sounds? What if the long tunnels of the Underground is home to all kinds of monsters and you have to stay away from the walls to be safe? I love this feeling. And even sick, it’s worth traveling and suffering a bit for :).
Just to give a quick example this happened almost the second I stepped into the first underground station, when arriving in London.
And now comes the actual point of this post (sorry for taking so long getting here). Because was it worth it, you might ask, going on a trip, while mostly just sleeping, being sick, and trying to recover? If you can’t even go for long walks, visit places or hang out with people? And I’ll reply yes! Yes it was. If for nothing else then for those small pockets of time going from A to B and taking in new sights and sounds, where your brain is just eating it all up and spitting out ideas as fast as your eyes can provide material. Returning to my initial point about that great thing that happens inside your head, whenever you are away, I think that's what I go on these trips for. To switch my brain into inspiration mode without even thinking about it, where all inputs are automatically turned into ideas. From sci-fi to realism, from words to pictures, from pieces of dialogue to world building ideas. What if some of the people passing by are actually Gods, assigned super powers by future scientists? Or what if that girl walking a bit away from her group of friends secretly longs to be at the center of the group and sometimes steals things from the others and keeps them in a closet at home to feel closer to them? Or if the young woman on the other sidewalk is practicing sentences in her head, so she can impress her boss at work and flirt with her crush, but every time she opens her mouth everything comes out as dinosaur sounds? What if the long tunnels of the Underground is home to all kinds of monsters and you have to stay away from the walls to be safe? I love this feeling. And even sick, it’s worth traveling and suffering a bit for :).
Just to give a quick example this happened almost the second I stepped into the first underground station, when arriving in London.
The
station looked like this:
And
I thought “Wouldn't it be cool and scary if something icky started
growing, from behind those fenced, arched window openings?” Maybe
like this:
Or
more like this, with a passer-by stopping because she got this weird
sensation that something is off:
Maybe
the passer-by is turning to look:
And maybe it could all come together something like this:
Even if I will never manage to execute a tenth of the ideas half as well as I would like to, I will never stop welcoming them or stop trying to execute them as well as I can :).
