Seeing Sounds OR Inspiration of a Third Kind.

I recently purchased N*E*R*D's third album Seeing Sounds and the first track made me think about inspiration. The first track isn't a song, rather it's a sort of introduction to the album and to the concept behind the album. Pharrell, or at least I think it's him, explains how as a child in the 80s he often saw sounds of the life all around him. It was quite interesting to learn that about him, seeing as he went on to become the super-producer he now his. It made me think of how we are inspired in general and how I am inspired specifically. I thought it would make an interesting post.

A couple of examples of how relative inspiration is and where we find it are these: the case of the woman who wouldn't get her tumor removed and the Jesus/Mary sightings in the strangest places. Think of all the cases you've ever heard of someone seeing Jesus in a food item, a watermark, or some other inanimate object. The latest case that I've heard is this one, of Jesus's likeness being found by a British woman in the top of a jar of Marmite, a food item not really known to the common American. What I found interesting about this case is how the woman's husband planned to keep the jar top with the likeness though he is admittedly not very religious, stating that he likes "to think it's Jesus looking out for us," which is a sort of inspiration.

The second example, and this one may be more relative, is the woman who refused to have a benign brain tumor removed, which I can't find a link to. She kept the tumor because she said it made her dreams vivid and helped her art. This made sense to me on a basic level, though as it relates to health made me question the sanity of her decision...or perhaps her tumor has become sentient and is trying to ensure its own survival (bad place to put a pun I guess).

Anyway, that story and the Seeing Sounds intro made me think of what inspires me to write and what my equivalent is to seeing sounds. As a child I always loved words. I loved metaphors (and to a lesser extent, similes) before I even knew the term for them. I also loved "pretty" sentences and phrases, which I can only define as sentences/phrases that sounded right or flowed well somehow. Because I always read so much I've always "seen" words in my head when I am thinking of a sentence or when I listen to someone give a speech. Therefore I was always a good speller but I mispronounced words all the time. I still do in fact; today I said "Can-No" for canoe because I thought about its spelling.

Words have been so important to me. I associate words with colors; there are words that make me think of blue or gold. I love knowing what words languages have and don't have as they relate to other languages. I love hearing the perfect lyric in a song, poem, or rap and they each make me feel a different way. I love the way certain words sound in the mind's ear as well as when different people say them. I have recently written a story about my love of such things and it will be included in the book.

I apologize for this post, it's not the best, but I took a nap in the middle of it and lost my train of thought. I missed last week's post and I'll be on the road next Friday but I'm going to try to write my post on Word or something and just add it early Friday morning, God willing!