So we have this big new forum and there's about ten days left in the First Evar AppleNova Write-a-thon and I thought maybe it would be a good time to have a thread where we can share what inspires us, creatively. It can be anything. I'll go first:
Things that inspire me:
TED Talks. The internet
in general is super inspiring to me, when it's not destroying my faith in humanity, by what it represents: co-operation and information being freely available. I mean, how much better off are we that no corporation controls it? And nowhere is that latter bit about free information more apparent than TED Talks. For the uninitiated, TED is a conference, where super-smart people talk about...everything, really, but mainly technology, entertainment, and design. It costs massive amounts of money to attend. But, and here's the cool part, TED puts podcasts of lots of those "talks" on iTunes. For free. It's sort of insane, but insanely awesome, that even I as a poor college student can be exposed to all that.
There's one "talk" in particular I wanted to highlight, and that's
J.J. Abrams' 2007 talk about his "Mystery Box." You'll have to scroll down a bit to find it. It's just seventeen minutes long but he packs more actual content into that then I think I've had in any of my classes thus far this semester, I mean
wow. He talks about mystery, and what inspires
him. And what's most inspiring of all is probably how animated and human and
real he is. I watch it whenever I'm feeling blocked; I basically have it memorized. There's a companion piece, a mystery-themed issue of Wired he guest-edited, that I'm just dying to get my hands on.
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, by Jean-Dominique Bauby. Oh. My. God. It's my favorite book ever. I will never buy a book by an author who's name starts with A, so that
The Diving Bell can always be the first book on my shelf. That's how much I like it. If Bauby can write that amazing book, I have absolutely no excuse for not being able to write. It's like $10 on Amazon. It's a quick read - 130ish pages, with big margins and lots of blank pages and half-pages, so you can easily read it in a sitting - but it is so packed with
wow. If you haven't read it, buy it now, seriously. And don't read anything else about it until you read it! I
firmly believe that people should know as little as possible about a book before they read it. They should know just enough to
get them to read it, and no more. Many
jacket flaps give away too much these days.
On Writing, by Stephen King. Another "wow" book. It's at once immensely inspiring and down-to-earth, nuts-and-bolts practical. It's dead honest. I'm not a Stephen King superfan but I don't really get it when people diss him; as
On Writing proves, he knows his shit. You don't have to be a Stephen King fan to read the book, though I guess he does sort of spoil a few of his stories in it. I think he talks most about
Misery, so if you want a great Tour de King read
Misery and then
On Writing and then
Lisey's Story, which you never hear people talking about but is sort of a logical follow-up to
On Writing. (All of those books are about writers. Who'da thunk?)
As far as design-y stuff goes, I would love to have enough money just to be able to collect examples of great design, so I can study and refer to them later. I've always sort of done this, to tell the truth - I got toys not to really play with, and not "just to have," but really to sort of study them. I remember buying Duplo Primo when it first came out, when it was known as LEGO Baby - I bought it with my own money, so I was obviously "too old" to play with it as intended, but I just liked examining it. I liked the colors, and how it was designed so that it could work with smaller Duplo and even smaller LEGO bricks. I still play with LEGO bricks. Shut up.
And of course, my own Mystery Box - my Mac mini - inspires me as well, both as an example of great design and as an example of what J.J. Abrams (watch it now!) would call "infinite possibility." Maybe those are both the same thing.
So, um, what inspires you?